


The Unfinished End

by Skaldfifla_Hlutr



Series: Unspoken Histories and Unforeseen Futures [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, BAMF Hela (Marvel), Brother-Sister Relationships, Family Bonding, Gen, Hela is a Good Sis, Hela needs a hug, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Loki (Marvel) is a Good Bro, Odin (Marvel)'s A+ Parenting, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Protective Siblings, Redemption, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Thor (Marvel) is a Good Bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:41:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 25,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24943279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skaldfifla_Hlutr/pseuds/Skaldfifla_Hlutr
Summary: The Ragnarok Cycle has been a long time coming. Although Asgard was destroyed, the cycle will not end until its ripples are felt throughout the nine realms and beyond - which is where Thanos comes into play.Loki knew he wouldn’t survive his encounter with Thanos, but he was surprised to find that Hela had brought him back. Her newfound kindness has him suspicious, but perhaps he had misjudged her based on first impressions.Hela has a bone to pick with Thanos and she’s willing to play nice if it means reaching her goal.*This story has ended. Leftover chapters are snippets of what happens afterwards. 14/08/2020
Relationships: Hela & Loki (Marvel), Hela & Thor (Marvel), Hela/Brunhilde, Hela/Freya, Hela/Loki (Marvel), Hela/Thor (Marvel)
Series: Unspoken Histories and Unforeseen Futures [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1855882
Comments: 8
Kudos: 120





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This may or may not be part of a series exploring the past and present of these characters we love, depending on your interest.
> 
> Usual disclaimers that characters and certain story snippets are not my ip.
> 
> Hope you all like it. I look forward to any feedback.

Hela glanced around and found an intact escape pod floating in a sea of dead Asgardians and debris. Despite her hand in the destruction of Asgard, seeing so many dead Asgardians not of her doing did not sit well with her. Thanos will pay dearly.

Thor was alive nearby. She sensed him, but failed to locate him. There were more important things at hand - like not drifting aimlessly in space for eternity. She had just been plucked from the ashes of Asgard, days ago by that deformed Titan and now here she is, drifting in space - again. 

She looked at Loki’s body in her arms. He was still fresh, but his mangled neck looked difficult to heal and she was terrible at healing magic. If she gave him a little nudge back to life, hopefully his own natural healing and magic could do the rest, but she had to work fast before his soul departs for the afterlife.

Quickly accessing her surroundings and creating a plan of action, Hela weaved around the debis, making her way to the pod by pushing off various pieces of space flotsam to change her trajectory. She dove inside, gently laying down Loki’s corpse flat and started focusing her seidr.

Hela twists her fingers and pushes his soul back into Loki’s chest. Holding her hand in place, she whispers the forbidden spell and blows a gentle breath of life on his face. It’s almost ironic that completing the spell require a breath of life, when it usually means sure death for the caster. She happened to have taken countless breaths of life from the dying, effectively rendering her an abundance of it, quite contradictory, being the goddess of death. Maybe it is a blessing that she has an affinity towards killing - if she were the savior type, she would be performing this spell left and right and severely imbalance the scale of life and death. Despite her inclination to mass murder, even she knew better than to do that. 

Loki’s body twitches, then starts to spasm violently as Hela holds him down. His Jotun skin is blistering cold, but manageable, considering she spent the last thousand years or so on Niflheim. Loki’s bones creak and crack as they are involuntarily reset into place, cells struggle to keep up as they are ripped from death’s stasis into hyperactivity and are forced to quickly recover from the trauma his body had recently endured and succumbed to. 

Seeing that the worst of it is over, Hela releases his arms and sits back on her heels giving Loki some space.

His eyes struggle to focus as he dizzily retches, vomiting blood and bile onto the ground. Automatically reverting to his usual Asgardian visage, Loki wiped his lips with that back of his hand as he tried for a snarky comment, “Well that was certainly worse than death.” He looked up and scrambled backwards. He did not expect to look death in the eye so soon again, or rather, his sister, Death. As in the one he tried to kill by blowing up Asgard just a few days ago.

Hela just stared at him with the most unfitting look, her face resting in her hands, squatting over him as if she were a child deeply entranced in watching frogspawn hatch into tadpoles.

The awkward silence and Hela’s undivided attention made Loki want to shrink into the wall, but given the sorry state his body and his seidr is in at the moment, an invisibility spell was out of the question.

“I assume you’re the one who brought me back?” Loki cautiously spoke first, “Thanks? I suppose.”

Before he could speak again, Hela shifted forward to touch him, but stopped when he moved back. “I saw... your soul,” she started, “It felt...very familiar,” sadness took over her eyes as she glanced downwards, “as if...” she drifted off without finishing her sentence - her mind going back to an early memory of someone hugging and giggling with her. Someone bouncing her on a knee and red sparks of magic glittering in front of her eyes. His voice sounded enough like Loki’s, but the face was a blur.

Loki didn’t know even the haughty, arrogant, psychopathic goddess of death was capable of making such an expression. He chuckled at himself bitterly thinking how Odin was always such a poor judge of character. Looks like this sister is more than meets the eye.

Snapping back to reality, she abruptly got up and pulled Loki with her. “Come on we’ve got work to do, a brother to find and a titan to kill. I will not be used and discarded like yesterday’s trash.”

Despite his intelligence, Loki’s mind struggled to keep up. Must be the whole brought back from the dead thing. Or she just said a whole bunch of things that sounded like it came from a reasonably, sane person. A crooked smile crept up his face, “Where to first?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some background to keep the story in line. I’m trying not to muddle with details and keep things moving. The progression is making logical sense in my mind, but I would love any feedback on continuity and clarity.
> 
> Sorry guys, I’m a noob. Hope. You. Like.

It had only been a few days since escaping the destruction of the Statesman and the unlikely siblings were lucky enough to find a habitable planet just two jump points from the wreckage. Although Loki was still physically weak from his recent demise, he and Hela made a hell of a pair when it came to overthrowing an empire. The army of two conned, fucked and threatened their way into taking over a small planet in just less than two weeks and were off to find Thor with a new vessel and chock-full of resources. Loki’s best guess at the next stop: Nidavellir. Thor needed a new weapon.

“I still think we should have slaughtered more of them before we left to firmly secure our position as rulers without the threat of being overthrown in our absence,” Hela crossed her arms and furrowed her brows as one finger found its way to her lower lip. 

Loki thought it was an odd look on her, especially as he realized he had a very similar expression when he was deep in thought. “Does it matter if they do? I doubt we’ll find ourselves in this neck of the galaxy again anytime soon. We have what we need.”

“Besides, dear Sister, there are many more ways to gain total submission of a people other than that of an iron fist,” he mockingly chastised, earning him a death glare from the goddess of death. He promptly shut up and folded himself into a corner. 

Recovering from death this time around was as long and agonizing as the past few times, but this was the only time he had someone helping him through it. If he was honest with himself, he took advantage of Hela’s odd newfound kindness towards him which emboldened him to speak up and taunt her as if they had always been siblings. He wasn’t quite sure why she had such a change of heart after seeing his soul, but the few times he brought up the topic earned him a concussion. Best to leave that topic alone for a while, he thought.

He did, however, find out why Hela appeared out of the Statesman’s rubble, when he thought she was supposed to be consumed by Surtur’s flame. It pained him to hear that despite their efforts, Surtur harnessing the full power of the eternal flame did little to harm her, however with some luck, the obliteration of Asgard did, leaving her stranded and floating in space. “You can’t kill death,” she laughed at their naivety. 

At some point, Thanos’s ship arrived.

Loki paled a little when he heard her say the name.

Thanos’s ambitions charmed her into joining him with the prospect of slaughtering half the universe. She happily obliged (obviously), giddy about the idea of once again conquering planets, killing things and valor. 

It wasn’t long before she realized he had actually already been on his way to Asgard to take the space stone and claim a debt when he found her rather than just traveling by as he had claimed. He saw her destructive potential and suggested their partnership, promising her the universe as her slaughterhouse if she could help him gather a few particular artifacts. She found the gauntlet and demanded to know what artifacts he was looking for. Once she confirmed his intentions with her and with the infinity stones, they had a bit of a falling out. In her weakened state, she was only able to destroy half his ship before Ebony Maw subdued her, magically trapping her in layers and layers of metal. 

They had brought her aboard the Statesman to dispose of her along with the rest of the Asgardians. When she finally broke free, she was already surrounded by the dead, their souls lingering lights above their deceased bodies. She felt one that was familiar and looked up just in time to see Thor clutching Loki’s body and Thanos disappearing with the space stone. 

Loki pinched the bridge of his nose. It was a lot to take in and he was happy to gain such a powerful ally against Thanos, but he’s going to have fun time convincing Thor, Valkyrie and the rest of the Asgardians about Hela’s change of heart.

—-

The trip to Nidavellir was relatively long, their quarters of the ship were confined and because there was nothing really much better to do, the pair had time for some heart to heart - a rarity based on their family’s track record. Oddly, it was Hela who initiated the conversation. She seemed to have a genuine interest in who he was as if she were trying to put the pieces together of how he fit into her life. Loki was guarded at first, as he always is, but he felt his tongue loosen the more they talked. It was strange how easy it was to feel comfortable around her when she’s not threatening to rip your throat out.

The more stories he heard of her ascension to the role as executioner, of her conquests, the more questions popped into his head as to who Hela really was and why she was imprisoned. He even started toying with the crazy theory that he was possibly related to her, as wild as that might sound.

He almost hated to admit it. Loki realized he may have more common interests with Hela than he did with Thor. She was surprisingly well-read, due to the “absolute dullness in Helheim,” she claimed, and showed prowess in balancing magic and muscle. Tactical combat was obviously not her strongpoint, though, but with a natural ability to literally suck the life out of her enemies at will, it probably wasn’t a skill she prioritized investing in. It certainly put things into perspective that she could have easily obliterated all life on Asgard if she meant to destroy it, but chose to go with physical slaughter to maximize her rule on the population by fear. The twisted Odin that she knew must have instilled that technique into her head from a young age.

They were nearing Nidavellir and preparing for landing within the hour when Hela caught him staring at her. “What? Out with it!” She demanded.

Loki was barely aware he was staring - now that he was mostly healed and not in constant pain, he let his mind wander at times. At the moment, he had been thinking about why they looked similar. Hela’s sudden demand brought him back and before he caught himself, his tongue slipped, “Have you ever slept with Laufey?”

There was an awkward moment of silence before her knee jerk reaction was to punch his lights out. Loki flinched and she stopped.

Hela gave a short laugh.

Was that a nervous laugh? Loki thought curiously.

Actually she had, but that’s a long story and she had a feeling she knew where this conversation was headed. “I’m too young to be your mother, if that’s what you were thinking,” she said flatly. “However I’m fairly certain you are my biological father.”

Loki’s eyes went wide as he slumped into the nearest chair. That wasn’t possible. He’s sure he is younger than Hela and he has always been careful with bedpartners. Was it possible? It definitely was. He mentally kicked himself at the prospectus that he may have done something incredibly stupid with the time stone or a spell and somehow spawned the goddess of death. He needed to think it through and process. Without a word he mindlessly got up and headed towards his quarters. 

Rather than explaining, Hela decided to leave him alone to stew on what she had just told him, perhaps let him reach his own misguided conclusion. It was quite fun to watch her normally put together little brother squirm and panic. She was a daughter of chaos, after all.

Loki mechanically sat on his bed and wracked his brain. First thing confirmed is that they are likely related, just not in the way he initially thought. Second, there is no second, he needs to gather more information. He snapped his head up.

The books! Many of the books Frigga had sent him during his time in Asgard’s dungeons were about a forgotten princess of an unspecified realm. He just always assumed she thought he would relate to the lost princess. Then again, Mother was raised by witches, specifically the völva, who were able to see the future, but unable to speak of it, lest suffer a gruesome fate. Maybe she was dropping hints to warn about Hela and the impending Ragnarök cycle all along. She wasn’t technically speaking of it. He had been reluctant to touch them since his mother’s death, but this would be a good time to revisit the texts and see them for more than just silly stories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When Hela says that she’s too young to be Loki’s mother, well, she probably isn’t. In my mind she’s slightly younger than Frigga for this story. Likely, Hela just thinks she is too young to be Loki’s mother. Or anyone’s mother. It’s hard to grow up when your childhood had been ripped away.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Psychopaths commonly have a shared trait: charm.
> 
> Loki is surprised at how different Hela’s personality is when talking with Eitri and equally surprised at how fondly he thinks of her. Either this confirms she is a true blooded psychopath, or it could be that this whole “goddess of death“ thing is just a front.

Hela landed their ship, excited to set foot on Nidavellir again after over a millennia of absence. Memories flooded her mind and she was a little girl again, brought by her father to Eitri’s forge to pick out a new weapon. Odin always praised her good eye for selecting the most powerful weapons the dwarves had to offer. 

She called out, but there was no reply. The forge wasn’t on and immediately she was on guard. Something wasn’t right. She turned at a loud clang to find Eitri struggling to fix the mechanism used for directing Nidavellir’s power to the forge.

“It’s good to see you old man,” Hela said light-heartedly as she made her way to where he was.

“Hela, is it really you?” a surprised Eitri turned, “Odin said you were lost in battle.”

“I was, but not against who you might think,” Hela replied bitterly as she jumped onto a large table to speak to him at eye level.

Immediately her eyes went down to Eitri’s hands, “Oh, what did they do to you?”  
Taking his hand in hers, she began breaking the metal off piece by piece. 

Eitri’s hands were severely burned and disfigured underneath all the metal. If she had to fix them, she would have to break the bones again. “I’m still absolute shit with healing magic, but Loki might be able to do something about it. He’s still on the ship.”

Eitri looks her over, “It’s good to see you dear girl,” he says, holding back a sob, “I’m glad you are well.”

“I don’t know about well,” Loki says, emerging from the ship with two large barrels of alcohol that he received from their newly subjugated planet. “Might not be your favorite, but it’s potent stuff...” he trails off as he sets down the barrels. Loki’s expression changed for the grim as he noticed the emptiness of the realm, “...Thanos has been here, hasn’t he.” It wasn’t a question. 

Eitri gave a sullen nod, “He took everyone. He took Brokkr.”

There was a sudden pang at the center of his chest that Loki brushed off as healing pains, but deep down, he knew it was the stifling fear of losing his brother to the Mad Titan. With an effortless jump, he landed gracefully next to Hela on the table. A soothing green glow surrounded his hands as Loki assessed the damage and cast a spell to help manage the pain. Now, to work on resetting the bone correctly and re-knitting the burned, infected skin.

Hela was furious. Thanos was thorough and there weren’t even bodies for her to bring back. 

Loki gave Eitri’s big hands a pat as he finished healing them, “They are resting in the halls of Valhalla and will return to fight when the end of Ragnarök nears,” he says comfortingly. He looked for a place to sit and just about collapsed into it.

“I assume Thor has stopped by and filled you in on the details? Asgard has been destroyed and Ragnarök has started.”

Quiet the whole time, Hela looked towards Loki, eyes sharp, “The Ragnarök cycle has already ended with Asgard’s destruction. You started it and Surtur ended it, just as prophesied.” 

The gall on that bitch. Loki was going to say, actually she started it, but decided to snap his mouth shut instead of bickering like children. She’ll probably say something along the lines of being his daughter so technically he’s still at fault. He dropped his head back and squeezed his eyes shut, pushing back the threat of vertigo.

Eitri spoke up, “Yes, Thor said that Odin died, then Hela came through a portal to destroy Asgard. He didn’t really want to talk much about it.”

“When he said ‘Hela,’ I had been hopeful he was talking about you, but it didn’t make sense for you to destroy Asgard after you worked so hard to build its grand empire.”

“I went back to take back what was mine,” she said calmly. “Something was done to the people. None of them remember me. There was only fear.”

Eitri frowned, “Loptr.”

“Odin’s brother,” he explained. “He’s the only one I could think of that was able to influence memory at that kind of scale. He was the one who officially started Ragnarök over four millennia ago, but it never came to fruition. I don’t know the details, but word had it that Odin executed him to prevent it.”

That caught his attention. Loki sat up from his reclined position.

He hadn’t heard of anyone by the name of Loptr. Not even in the storybooks. They had always said he was the calamity that brought Ragnarök. There was a bitter taste in his mouth. All those years he had endured the teasing only for it to have been a case of mistaken identity. The teasing stopped once he stopped fighting it and acting his part as the pending harbinger of doom. 

“I always thought you resembled him when you were little,” gesturing to Loki, “but he died long before you were born. Seeing how you look now, I would dare say that you might be his current incarnation,” Eitri explained.

Hela sat frozen. Eitri’s words unintentionally triggered some of her earliest memories, a beautiful witch with wolf-like eyes and a mane of long flowing black hair and Muspel sorcerer with wild, reddish-ginger hair and Loki’s face - they must have been her parents. She stared downwards letting her hair cover her face as her eyes betrayed her mind and began to well up. It had been so long since she was allowed to cry freely. The forge was one of the rare places where she felt at ease enough that she could.

Odin would never let her cry. Tears and emotions were a sign of weakness and an act punishable by lashes - so she used it as fuel, disguising it as rage and violence. 

Maybe it was a force of habit, she pushed down all those disgusting feelings she felt from what Eitri had said and turned it into fuel for hating Odin. Odin had murdered her parents, molded her into a monster feared by her people and tossed her aside once he was finished. She needed to find his soul.

Sensing Hela’s distress, Loki put a reassuring hand on her shoulder only to be met with her strong grip at his throat and raging, tear-stained eyes.

Luckily Hela let go almost as soon as their eyes met. As soon as she was sure he had recovered, she stalked off to the spaceship alone.

Rubbing his throat, “As I was going to say, I’m here if you need anything,” Loki called out without any anger or hatred from her recent attempt at his life. He was developing a soft spot for her, but he wasn’t sure if it was because of their similar backgrounds or because of the influence of his sharing a soul with her father. 

Eitri sighed, “She wasn’t always like that.”

Loki looked back at him.

“The first time I met her, she was about the same age as I met you, however the purpose of the meeting was to commission her with some weapons,” Eitri explained. “She was quite a cute little girl,” Eitri smiled fondly at the memory. 

Loki made a face. Hela had a face only a parent could love. Not that she wasn’t beautiful. Her features were quite attractive. She was just terrifying. With the plethora of beings Loki had associated with, that’s saying a lot.

Not registering Loki’s open signs of disgust, Eitri continued, “She was a shy, sensitive child, but worked hard to be assertive and instill fear in her enemies. Each time I saw her, which was quite often, her expressions became darker and her eyes grew colder. Her taste in weaponry started out with selecting the most powerful, but eventually it turned into whatever could do the most bodily damage. At some point she didn’t even resemble the little girl I met anymore.”

Loki absentmindedly poked at the new mold for the new mechanism to check if it had hardened. How can he use this new knowledge to turn the tables with Thanos, allow Ragnarök to complete its cycle while keeping as many of their people alive as possible?

“Ah that old thing needed to be replaced for centuries,” Eitri said pointing to what seemed to have been absorbing most of Loki’s attention. “We never got around to doing it due to the ever increasing demands of weaponry. I guess it had to break to finally replace it.”

Loki looked up and was about to say something as Hela returned, having calmed her urge for violence.

“Eitri, do you have it in you for a couple more weapons?” Hela asked reagally as a true crown princess. 

“Of course, your highness. What are your wishes?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not much action in this chapter, just setting up for the future.

Loki was reviewing the contents of the books Frigga had given to him on the ship when Hela walked in with a large bag and manic grin. The sight brought up memories of how Odin would carry a big bag during Yule every year to hand out fruit or small trinkets to children who were good and light beatings for those who were bad. 

“Did you think of more creative ways to murder people?”

“No, Little Brother, but I do have some presents for you.”

Hela dropped the bag on the table with a clang and opened it to reveal a portion of its contents - a small pouch and a twig that looked suspiciously like a magic wand.

Loki stared at her, “Sister Dearest, I don’t know if you’re being serious or mocking me.” A comment that, of course, earned him a slap to the back of the head. 

“I have one of these too,” Hela said as she takes out an identical pouch from her dimensional pocket. “Put your favorite weapon inside and it will make unlimited copies of it - always sharp, always ready to use.” 

That explained her endless supply of necroswords. He had always been wondering about those. Even he didn’t have enough seidr to produce an endless arsenal of weapons. 

“And this one,” she pointed at the twig, “you might be a little green to use, but you’ll get used to it,” she smiled with a glint of mischief that may even match his own.

“Why do I need a magic wand, I’m not a fairy,” he quipped.

The way she seemed to avoid touching it had him a little wary of what it might do. Of all people, he knew - karma. Play enough tricks on people and someone will eventually get you back. 

Hela grabs the twig with the bag and quickly puts it into his hand. Not expecting its weight, Loki’s hand is slammed on to the table. Amateur trick, but she wasn’t laughing . He adjusts his grip to get used to its weight and instantly the twig starts sapping his seidr. He reflexively drops it on the table as if he was burned.

“This child is called Laevateinn and will shift into any weapon according to your preferences. It can also store seidr for later use.”

Loki makes an attempt to hold it again, this time aware of its hunger for seidr. He was known as one of the most powerful sorcerers in the nine realms and had a monstrous amount of seidr to match the title, but the speed at which the twig was draining him was a bit straining, even for him.

He also wondered how much seidr it could actually store. Hopefully a great deal if it was truly going to be useful. It still hadn’t turned into any other weapon making him wonder if she was just making a fool out of him or if he needed to do something in order for it to shift.

Still eyeing her cautiously, “I’ll need to thank Eitri and properly compensate him. I doubt these are your run of the mill items.”

“They’re gifts,” she said simply.

“From me,” Hela said, a bit…flustered?

“I…” he was at a loss for words, “Thank you,” came his simple reply.

Perhaps she had some things in common with Thor too. He never thought the great ominous goddess of death would actually be a sentimental sap at heart - but then again, that wouldn’t be too intimidating, would it? He respected the need to keep up appearances and didn’t pry any further.

“In any case, back to our conversation earlier, I suspect we are still in the middle of Ragnarok,” he said, quickly changing the subject, to Hela’s relief as well. “I’ve been consulting some books Mother had given me.

“Some of the literature she had provided detailed the life and banishment of an unnamed warrior princess and the wrath she brought upon the realm once she was able to return,” Loki explained. “Based on what I know about your history so far, I’d say you match this story’s protagonist completely.”

Steering Hela’s attention to books more relevant to their current stage of Ragnarök, Loki summarized, “There were also books on how the ‘Fates’ do not appreciate the people curbing the coming of the end of days. They vowed that…”

“...the next coming of the End, once put back into motion, will be more devastating and destructive than any cycle in the past,” Hela finished. “ Looks like the same person was sending me reading material.

“Looks like it,” Loki mused. Wonderful. It saves so much time when your co-conspirators are already on the same page. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you guys like it! I would love to hear any comments. Thank you in advance.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki has a cheat for doing research. Hela finds out more about Loptr.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry guys! Ran into dog troubles all this week so I’m a bit late. First because of those damn fireworks, then a broken toenail and puppy blood everywhere and now I been bitten by my neighbor’s dog because he chomped on my pup’s face. Luckily both dogs are ok. 
> 
> I’ll survive - but typing with one less finger needs some getting used to. Don’t worry, I still have my finger, it’s just very bruised and a bit bloody - ‘tis but a flesh wound.

Hela dumps a pile of books onto the table where Loki was sitting.

“What’s this?” He asked, already having a good idea what it was.

“Books.”

Hela’s communication skills need some work. Rather, he wasn’t sure if they actually needed help or if she just liked pushing his buttons.

“I can summarize the contents, but I have a feeling you’re the type that prefers to read everything on your own,” she said to her own amusement.

That, she was right. He rather spend the time reading the material himself than trust someone with a potentially slippery mind. Plus, he could create clones of himself to read and directly feed him the information so it shouldn’t take too much time at all.

“Since we are here I would like to catch up with Eitri,” she kept up her haughty, mocking tone. 

And maybe find out more about Loptr, she didn’t say.

Loki was slightly annoyed, the universe is on the verge of collapse and her priorities are to catch up with a friend. He took a deep breath. 

Well, hopefully she would find out more information about this Loptr character. Maybe whatever he did to start Ragnarok could give them some hints on how to end it or how to salvage what was left.

To be honest, Loki was curious about Loptr too, a person that was possibly his previous incarnation and Odin’s brother. There had been nothing about Odin’s brother in the palace library. Actually he had no recollection of ever seeing that name in any of the libraries on Asgard. He knew. He’s probably read every book available in Asgard - even the restricted ones, under the guise as Odin. 

He found it hard to believe that there would be absolutely nothing, not even a footnote written about someone, you would think, as important as the king’s brother. But then again, Hela had been written out of Asgard’s histories and no one ever raised a question about what kind of entity Odin’s mother was. It made him wonder how much of Asgard’s history had been left out. What parts of the history lessons that he used to, so diligently pay attention to, were even real or had everything been propaganda all along.

His head hurt thinking about it. He had spent enough time in Asgard’s dungeons sorting out what was real and what was not to have it all upended again. He needed a break.

* * *

Dwarves were a hard working people and rarely rest once they have their eyes set on a goal. Although Asgard had been relatively peaceful for the past 1000 years, having non stop work orders coming in from clients of more mundane realms for the past 4000 years certainly kept them busy. 

No one in the civilized galaxy makes better cookware. 

Eitri was digging through said 4000 years of old requests, work orders, invoices and other “paperwork” as he saw Hela approaching.

“I don’t have much of anything Loptr left,” Eitri said regrettably as he handed Hela a notebook and a rune stick. “Brokkr didn’t like the guy much so he probably threw everything out as soon as he finished his jobs.”

Eitri sounded like he was searching for things to say, maybe help her a little more by telling her what he remembered about her father.

“I remember when his lover was expecting their first blood child. Fenris and Jormungandr are your brothers by magic,” Eitri added as if an afterthought. “He was so happy and kept stopping by unannounced. He asked us to commission the child a hammer hoping one day he could help them build Asgard into a strong empire. As Brokkr was working hard to design and build the hammer, he popped in to chat about his children and about the baby so much that Brokkr miscalculated, making the handle too short,” Eitri’s chuckle didn’t reach his eyes, “He said that Loptr was as annoying as a fly in his ear and that his name was forever tarnished as the master smithy who made the lopsided hammer. Loptr was still happy to accept Mjolnir, claiming it would be perfect for your dainty hands.”

Hela brushed the cover of the small book. He got one thing right. It was so ironic that she did use Mjolnir to build Asgard, but she was also the indirect cause of its decimation.

Another revelation was that she has another brother, Jormungandr - the Midgard Serpent. She had always suspected Fenris was somehow connected to her due to their chemistry in and out of battle, but now that he was gone, the sense of missed opportunities caused a lingering ache deep within her chest. Since her next stop was Midgard, she wondered whether she would have time to search for him.

Eitri’s gentle eyes scanned her expression as he stroked her hair with a giant finger, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t aware you didn’t know he was your real father and it wasn’t my place to question the royal family.”

Hela stood in silence and just nodded. Eitri didn’t have to explain himself to her, nor did she expect him to find anything at all, but she was thankful he did.

Hela was curious about what would be recorded on the rune stick and what was written in the notebook, but at the same time, she was reluctant to look into its contents in fear of - what? Of nostalgia? Of disappointment? She wasn’t quite sure herself and decided to put it away for later - maybe during their next leg of travel. Argh. She was frustrated that talk of Loptr, Loki and being in such a safe place brings up so much emotion.

Back at the ship, she was met with a half maniacal Loki. Poor child must have been reading too much.

“I think I have a plan,” Looked up, his lips twisted into his signature crooked smile, “do you trust me?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki and Hela find out they were a bit late and split up to access the damages on Midgard and Niflheim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s often some confusion between Hel, Helheim and Niflheim. For our purposes, let’s say Hel, short for Helheim exists on a “planet“ called Niflheim. Like a capital or something. I do plan to elaborate in another story if you’ll have me.

Obviously Hela would say no. Understandable. He would probably say no if he asked himself that too. 

Hela also seemed a bit colder than she was during their trip to Nidavellir. An educated guess would suggest that it was because he’s not technically her “biological” father, but maybe a shadow of him. Great, another shadow. Loki sighed to himself, shoving the thought into the back of his mind and forced himself to finish packing necessities into his dimensional pocket. 

Although she didn’t like his plan, she couldn’t come up with a better one so they are following it. Next stop: Midgard. As much as he hated to admit it, he needed that third rate Strange for the plan to work - rather, he needed the Eye of Agamotto. Plus Midgard was likely Thor’s next stop.

Luckily, being back in the nine realms meant getting to Midgard was much easier. It certainly helped that Hela already had experience walking through the hidden paths, making it much more efficient than space travel. However, the path is too narrow for their ship, which meant they were in for a loooong walk.

The journey to Midgard was mostly silent with little small talk here and there. Loki was busy planning out how he should approach Thor. More importantly, how to approach Thor with Hela in tow. _Hey Thor, how’ve you been? I’m back, and oh by the way, so is Hela. Oh and don’t worry, she’s actually my daughter. She says she’s turning over a new leaf_ \- doesn’t sound like it will cut it. His attention shifted to the outside world as the flicker of color from Yggdrasil’s branches encased them. He just hoped that Hela doesn’t make things worse.

Hela on the other hand, unhindered by their brisk pace, seemed to be engrossed in the content of a book for most of the way. It was a wonder how she hadn’t fallen off the branches.

The book didn’t look like one his mother had provided, but who knew. She had been imprisoned far longer than he had. Whatever it was, Loki hoped its contents could glean some knowledge from it to help their plan along.

He was just about to ask about its contents when Hela suddenly looked up from her book and stopped in her tracks.

“There is a disturbance.”

Loki picked up the pace to a sprint. They were nearly there, but they still needed to make their way to the Sanctum once they left the hidden paths and he wasn’t quite sure where they would be dropped off.

Hela took off at a fast pace as well, however she did not intend to stop at Midgard. “You find Thor first. Something is wrong in Hel. I need to head to Niflheim. I’ll come back as soon as I have assessed the situation.”

Loki didn’t have time to respond before she blinked off, presumably jumped to another branch to reach Niflheim.

Loki steps off Yggdrasil’s branches and out of a narrow alley a few blocks away from the Sanctum to find New York’s streets nearly empty. Cars were piled up on the streets, airplanes were falling uncontrollably from the sky and the few people present were either crying or panicking. The air was thick with grief as piles of dust seemed to be strategically placed next to wailing people. It was almost as if a lousy sweeper at the verge of quitting was scorning a strict head maid with little inconveniences.

He felt a prickle on the back of his neck as he realized the piles weren’t just dust, but had, until recently, been people. Dread took over him. Was this unique to the mortals or had this meant Thanos had succeeded?

A wave of panic and loss washed over him, bringing him to his knees. What of the rest of Asgard? What if Valkyrie is gone? What if Thor is gone? Where were the Avengers? What happened? How could they let Thanos collect all the stones? He cursed himself for spending too much time on Nidavellir. He was on autopilot and he was spiraling. But knowing he was spiralling and being able to stop it was a different story. Tears kept falling, but he felt himself laughing hysterically. He could see himself moving, but he didn’t feel like he was completely aware or had any control of his movements. By the time his mind regained clarity, he was already standing in the foyer of the empty Sanctum, not quite steady on his feet and surrounded by more piles of dust. 

Loki took a slow shaky breath, then another, then a third. That was unsightly. Maybe he should consider himself lucky that no one was around to see. Realizing his hands were still trembling, he clenched his fists to steady them before instinctively reverting back to thumbing his palm. 

Strange was probably dusted if not already dead, but it’s okay. The hints in his mother’s books suggested that this could have been a possible outcome. Hela had already notified Helheim to prepare if a contingency plan was needed. He had initially hoped to have some time studying the time stone and possibly channel some of its power into Laevateinn before Thanos got to it. In order to allow Ragnarok to successfully complete, he needed to let Thanos proceed with the great culling and flood the realms of the dead. Reversing the effects of the mass genocide would have been a lot easier by designing a spell tethered to the time stone’s power, but it seems the recent developments have thoroughly scrapped his initial plan. The silver lining of the whole situation was that with this, he was fairly certain Ragnarok had officially completed its cycle. 

His contingency plan was going to require some additional effort. He took Laevateinn out of the dimensional pocket and began pouring as much seidr into it as he could spare, thanking Hela for having the foresight to gift him with such a weapon. This was probably going to take multiple sessions he thought miserably.

He still needed to physically find Thor and somehow contact Hela to consult about the change of plans.

Running through the plans in his head helped him calm down enough to build up the confidence to reach for Thor. Dread still grasped tightly to his chest as he worried about the prospect of Thor being among the ones dusted. Focusing his mind, he honed in on Thor’s location and was instantly relieved to find his brother alive albeit far from where he was. 

He had just enough seidr to teleport himself to where Thor was. He only hoped that his reach for Thor earlier had given enough of a sign that Thor knew he was coming and it was not another trick.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hel is in chaos. Hela grabs the reigns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure if you will see it this way, but in my mind, Hela is a pretty good ruler in Helheim - probably to the point that she is bored most of the time because  
> A.) The people that have the will to work for her are very competent and  
> B.) The residents of Hel are dead and therefore pretty dull since they don’t have much to ‘live’ for. Most are just waiting to be processed into cosmic energy. (I got this from Pokémon Go actually - how you send your unwanted Pokémon in to be churned into candy - lol.)
> 
> Queen Freya will be further explored somewhere else.

Something was very wrong indeed. Hel, rather Niflheim as a whole, was overpopulated with the dead. Hela pushed her way back to the palace and contacted the other regions of death.

Elysium, Brittia, Zion V, Duat, Gehenna, Bulu, Neorxnawang, Yomi and Kibukuth were all experiencing a similar influx of the dead. The few civil servants of the afterlife who had the will to work were swamped with processing the dead.

Killing brought joy, but paperwork and processing was a killjoy. Hela was proficient to keep Hel working like clockwork for the last millennia, but it was never something she reveled in. She will personally make sure Thanos suffers a long and painful death.

Whatever this was, is a mess on a different level. “Why were there plants and animals here? I never approved processing non-sentient beings. They make poor energy sources. Where else are these creatures being redirected to?” Hela’s head secretary barked left and right.

Hela had enough of the chaos.

“Silence!” She commanded from her throne. The whole realm shivered to a quiet halt - even the biting winds of Niflheim was ordered into submission.

Immediately, she handed out task orders to her workers to allocate all recent deaths by time, by nature and cross-referencing to find any patterns indicating direct or indirect connections to Thanos. A small team was assembled to identify qualified individuals among the newly dead to assist with processing. They were always short-handed, but a well oiled machine that was fast and efficient. Hela smiled, proud of the competence of her workers. Those who survive working in Hel were the best in the universe. The added bonus was that they are physically unable to work themselves to death.

“All souls collected this day must be forfeited,” she emphasized. “The souls aren’t ripe and would tarnish the energy pools that run through Niflheim, Nornheim, Styx and Yomi.”

Watching how She contemplated giving Eitri a call and asking for her two workers back, but hopefully with some of the newly dead volunteers, they could make due. 

Hela had one more call to make before she makes her way back to Midgard.

“Queen Frigga,” Hela formally addresses. It’s good to hear you have returned to your position as leader of Valhalla.

“Please, now that I’m no longer queen of Asgard, I prefer to use my own name.”

“Queen Freya,” Hela corrected herself.

“It seems Ragnarok has come to pass, but the warriors of Valhalla never got their fair share of battle,” Hela started. 

“Yes, it seems tampering with Ragnarok’s coming caused unexpected ripples across the nine realms and beyond. Not only were the conditions for releasing the warriors unmet such that I was unable to bring them back into the world of the living, but I am also aware that there seems to be a sudden increase among common deaths” she confirmed.

“I have been in touch with the other realms of the dead and they have indicated a similar situation. I would like to make arrangements with Valhalla and your other associates to funnel these common souls back to the land of the living as you do with the warriors. They will need proper bodies.”

Hela internally thought of the logistics needed to pull this off.

“I understand. I have started preparations since my return, however bringing back life in such large proportions will require some more time and someone from the other side. The Valkyrior were supposed to be our couriers, but they can no longer cross over to the other side.” Freya’s tone had no hint of condescension, nor blame, but merely stating the facts.

Hela cringed at her blunder all those years ago. Blinded by rage and betrayal, Hela mindlessly slaughtered all the Valkyrior when Odin gave the order to kill her. When she came to, she dug desperately looking for Brunnhilde’s body. Unfortunately, her loss of control left the Valkyrior in such fine pieces that identification was virtually impossible for most of the bodies. 

When she saw her on the bridge fighting opposite of her and alongside Thor, she was both relieved and enraged at the same time. Another that was rightfully hers, that he took. 

Hela closed her eyes to push her regret aside. “I trust you will make such accommodations. As for the person on the other side - there is one Valkyrie remaining that may be able to help us, however I’m not sure if she would be willing after what I have done.”

Freya softened, “My dear, Hela, what you did may have been unforgivable, but Odin was hardly faultless in the way things went down. Maybe if you two try to talk instead of immediately resorting to violence, she might be willing to set aside past grievances, at least temporarily, to restore the damages of this calamity.”

Hela kept her silence, but gave a half nod in acknowledgment. Goddess of the dead she may be, but she had no jurisdiction over the Valkyrior dead or alive. At least what Queen Freya just said confirmed that she survived the ship’s wreckage. 

“By the way,” she called just as communication was going to end, “Thank you for the books.”

Freya nodded and ended the communication.

She was going to need a lot of help recycling the old long dead souls that were ripe enough to return to the galaxy pools. They needed as much energy as they could to pull this off without sacrificing basic operations.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one’s a shorter one. Hopefully I’ll get the next one out soon!

Maybe he overestimated himself and he still wasn’t quite at his best yet. Teleporting to Wakanda was much more strenuous than it should have been as he made his grand entrance by more or less stumbling into Thor. He barely managed to address his brother properly before he hit the floor, passed out from exhaustion.

Loki woke up nauseous, confused and barely able to breathe. It took him a long moment to refocus his mind and remember what he was supposed to be doing. The last time his seidr was this depleted was four years ago, right after Svartalfheim (when Hela brought him back, it was more of a physical problem). However last time, he didn’t have the weight of half the galaxy on his chest. Last time, he had the luxury of resting in the palace posing as Odin who had succumbed to the Odinsleep. This time, where was he? 

He frowned.

“Get off or I swear I’m going to stab you.”

Thor awoke with a jerk (literally) and air finally saturated his lungs. Loki warily sat up putting a palm to his forehead in hopes that it would stop the spinning and calm the dull ache.

Thor sat back, uncharacteristically quiet, not knowing quite how to begin. He looked like he desperately wanted to lean in for a hug, but was restraining himself with every fiber of his body. The redness in his eyes also suggested he had little sleep, probably since the Statesman.

“Loki, I…” Thor started, but didn’t finish. There was a worry in his eyes as if speaking would somehow break the spell and he would lose his brother all over again.

Wait, eyes? One’s a different color. Scrambling for something to say, anything to say, Loki grasped for a starting point, “I see you’ve got your eye back.” Inwardly, he facepalmed, what a silvertongue you are, he mentally kicked himself.

Thor absentmindedly rubbed the scar as his features softened, “Welcome back.”

The simplicity of the two words took Loki by surprise as he was expecting to have to explain himself, explain his death, resurrection and intention. “...yea, I suppose, I’m back,” was all he managed to get out.

—-  
Thor’s face was an open book and questions were written all over it, but Loki was going to let him stew for a while. Right now, he needed ground level details of the situation to reassess his contingency plan and somewhere in between, find time to reintroduce Hela to Thor, ideally without any killing involved.

His appearance put the remaining avengers into high alert, but Dr. Banner seemed genuinely happy to see him alive. Following his lead, the rest were able to temporarily set aside differences to approach the problem.

Queen Ramonda was debilitated with grief from the loss of King T’Challa and Princess Shuri so recently after she lost her husband, but was gracious as to lending them space in the palace to regroup before they returned to New York. 

“I should have just stayed put,” Loki muttered to himself.

Back at the upstate Avengers compound, all able bodied personnel were gathered to hear the briefing - something Loki had objected to as he didn’t think it wise to show himself yet. Rather than show his face, he opted to present under the guise of Hela’s visiage, to Thor’s displeasure.

“Of all the people in the world, why do you have to use her face? Your female form would be sufficient - or maybe Lady Sif! The mortals know her.”

“Which is precisely why I’m not going to use her face,” Loki retorted. “The mortals do not know about what happened on Asgard and there’s a particular air of confidence being your sibling, one that did not lead an attack on their planet, holds. Especially when you are beside me vouching my trustworthiness. I can be your wayward older sister that had been traveling since your birth and seen a thing or two around the universe,” he reasoned.

Thor still disliked the idea, but he kept his mouth shut. He was right, being another Asgardian royal who is willing to serve as protector of the realm does make it sound like a good pill to swallow. 

Loki, of course, had ulterior motives for being disguised as Hela. As far as Thor knew, at least for now, she was dead. If he played his cards right, hopefully establishing her image as someone credible and dependable could improve his chances of avoiding murder when he introduces the real Hela. Maybe it would soften the blow with Thor too once he gets used to being around someone with her face. Loki tried his best to mimic the way she carried herself, the little quirks and gestures as well as way of speaking to make the whole thing more believable. He knew he was low on time and Hela could show up at any moment now.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hela meets everyone. All is well? It could have gone down much worse. At least no blood was spilt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, work is ramping up so this might be the last chapter until the weekend (4 days). I don’t know. Maybe I can pump something out after drinking some mead I made - dear Odin I’m looking for inspiration!
> 
> My friends, until then - Skol!

Thor was sparring with the Captain while Loki was still preparing for the briefing when Hela tapped his shoulder. He would never admit it, but he jumped with the most off-brand yelp. 

Hela tried hard to suppress a smile. Hopefully Loki missed the slight twitch at the side of her lip.

He didn’t, but chose to ignore it. 

There were very few people who could sneak up behind him in the nine realms, with the enormous amount of pressure her seidr normally exudes, he never expected Hela to be one of them. Then again, Hela has been full of surprises since the day they met.

He haphazardly threw up a cloak of invisibility to shield the both of them from sight before talking. The last thing he needed was for Thor to walk into two Helas arguing.

“You could have notified me you were coming!”

“With what? I reached out, but your signal was weak.”

Ah, right. He had just poured massive amounts of seidr into Laevateinn and the rest evaporated when he teleported to Thor. He wouldn’t have had enough seidr to maintain the connection even if he did have enough to answer.

“Why are you disguised as me,” she asked, pulling at his face.

“It made logistical sense and I needed to gain the mortals’ trust quickly,” he said, swatting her hand away. “What better way than another Asgardian royal who wasn’t me.”

“Plus your status as the goddess of death gives our plan more substance for the mortals to wrap their little minds around. I highly doubt they would be throwing themselves in the plan’s favor if it were presented by someone who tried to take over their planet.”

Hela snorted a laugh, “And failed?” She smiled with way too much teeth, “I think I may have severely overestimated you, Little Brother.”

Loki felt a vein twitch in the side of his forehead, “All part of the grand scheme, I assure you.”

Just then, they heard a rumbling outside the compound.

Keeping them invisible, Loki and Hela went outside to investigate in time to watch a woman, Kree, who suspiciously radiated with the power of the tesseract, set down a spacecraft.

The ship’s entrance hissed open as an emaciated Tony Stark stumbled off the ramp. The core Avengers immediately reached out to catch him diverting the attention away from another figure emerging from the ship: Nebula.

Enraged, Loki dropped the invisibility cloak and his glamour as Hela and quickly threw three consecutive daggers towards Nebula’s head in warning.

Nebula stopped in her tracks as the rest of the crew refocused on Loki in alarm.

Pointing a fourth dagger at her, the normally soft spoken Loki boomed, “What is the daughter of Thanos doing here?” He wasn’t going to waste a single word. Not waiting for a reply, he prepares to throw the dagger at his target to be stopped by Tony Stark and a sentient rabbit (or was it one of those shit-talking ratatoskr? - he wasn’t sure). 

Hela grabs his arm as he realizes a moment too late that their cover is blown. He feels the heavy pressure of static and ozone emanating from Thor and braces for impact as a lightning bolt is aimed at Hela. With a twist of his fingers, Loki throws up a shield, covering them both.

The electricity dissipates, but the low hum suggests there could be more coming.

Hela smiles with her shark-like grin and doesn’t flinch at the hostility in the air, “Hello, Brother.”

Pepper had already escorted Tony away as the rest of the Avengers stood on alert waiting for the three divine siblings to make their move. They were obviously confused at why Thor would suddenly attack Hela (who they thought was Loki) and why there was a Loki double in his own skin attacking an alien that had apparently saved Tony. They did not dare interfere, but nor did they dare leave them alone.

Hela put her hands up in a sign of peace, “I can expl…”

Thor cut her off before she could finish. “Brother, explain to me why she,” he said pointing to Hela with Stormbreaker, “is alive and why you are with her.”

Electricity sizzles through the air - Thor is still very visibly upset.

After a few moments of tense silence, Thor’s lightning died down a little, “Does your resurrection have anything to do with her?” He asks in a quiet voice.

Loki slowly nods.

Without a word, Thor flies off with Stormbreaker leaving Loki and Hela with a group of very strung up Avengers. They had some explaining to do.

* * *

Rather than an institution-wide briefing, with the recent development, the Avengers opted for a core meeting first. Natasha reports the damages and Loki reintroduces Hela and details his plan.

“Hela is our older sister and the goddess of death,” Loki explained, “There had been some misunderstandings that led to Hela being found by Thanos amongst the ruins of Asgard.”

Thor walked in to join the meeting. He sat in the back and avoided all eye contact.

“Let’s just say she was less than pleased with his hospitality and would like to have a word with him,” Loki concluded.

“How can we trust she won’t turn on us,” Thor projects, looking defiant. 

All eyes go to Thor.

Loki could tell Hela was getting annoyed.

“The first thing she did was attack when you and I met her.”

“What did you think I’d do?” Hela seethed in anger. “That old fool murdered my parents and made me believe I was heir to his throne. In the end he just wanted me for my power and threw me away once he was done.”

“And you?” She sneered, thrusting an accusing finger at Thor, “What did you do? It was your bright idea that turned Asgard into space dust!”

“Asgard is not a…”

“Asgard IS a place!” Hela screamed definitively, “It was a place! It was home! If you, for once, stopped to think about why Mjolnir was a hammer, why I drew my power from Asgard - it was because Asgard drew its power from me. It is my essence! I built it!”

Thor snapped his jaw shut. He didn’t know Hela and had judged her based on what his father had said just before he left. He never gave it any thought that the people of Asgard, the people that she had shed blood for, so they could prosper, had forgotten all trace of her. 

Loki remained silent. He knew all too well how disheartened she must have felt. When all her actions were for the good of the realm, only to be thrown aside once the goal was met. He was probably even considered lucky as his childhood was relatively peaceful and he had Frigga to guide him. Hela never had the luxury of being treated as a princess, let alone as a child. He couldn’t help but feel a sense of guilt over her lost childhood. Maybe if Loptr was around, things would have played out differently.

After her uncharacteristic display of raw emotion, Hela calmed herself, put her mask back on and smoothed her hair back without bringing out her horns. 

“There is no need to argue over what is gone. What’s done is done,” she said quietly.

“Right now, the three of us will need to go to the Garden and retrieve the stones so we can get those dead squatters out of my realm,” she said, “and you will guide us there,” pointing to Nebula, who was surprised they knew about the Garden.

Nebula nodded in approval. Her face may be fixed in a permanent scowl, but in the short time they met, she actually really liked Hela.

“What about the rest of us,” Captain Rogers said, “this is our fight too.”

“Yeah. I got dibs on putting the final holes in that bastard,” Rocket shouts.

Before the Captain spoke up, Loki almost forgot about all the mortals in the room who seemed to have blended into the background.

“You stay put,” Loki said. “From the information I have gathered, it’s been nearly a week since Thanos did away with half the universe. With his goal fulfilled and the infinity stones still at hand, who knows what else he might do.”

“You are fools to think you can take on Thanos. We are the only ones in this room that will stand a chance. Other than maybe her.” He points at Captain Danvers.

“Look Twinkle Toes, I get you’re Asgardian and you’re macho and shit, but we’re the ones with the ship. No us, no ride *capeesh?”

“B’sides, this here baby packs quite a punch,” Rocket adds, patting the unusually large rifle he had been polishing.

Loki begrudgingly agreed. They had left their ship on Nidavellir and they were already short on time as it was. Spending a year under the titan’s care, he couldn’t imagine the stones were just lying around to be retrieved to undo what he had done. Thanos was biding his time, possibly to recuperate or waiting to eradicate any avengers with the stones once and for all. Loki desperately hoped it was the former.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *capeesh - obviously Rocket is no Italian so I’m not going to spell this correct nor assume he’s going to pronounce it remotely close to the Italian way.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “On to the garden to harvest me some grapes,” Hela sings. Is she a gardener? A headmaster? A winemaker?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The mead was good, but alas, in terms of inspiration, it was a shart from Odin’s ass. Finally got this out. Enjoy.

Loki would cloak their presence as Thor, Hela and Captain Danvers ambush him. Captain Rogers, Rocket and Nebula will retrieve the gauntlet and be their backup. The rest of the team will be on standby in the ship that Hela’s workers will bring over.

That was the plan, at least.

Things rarely go according to plan.

Thanos was still recovering, but he was also prepared for an ambush.

Loki had begun cloaking the Benatar two jump points away from the Garden, just to be safe from detection. For extra precaution, rather than flying through the atmosphere and landing, Captain Danvers flew out to slowly maneuver the Benetar onto the ground manually. It would be a lot easier than casting glamour over the whole descent trajectory and hope the wind blows in their favor.

The moment they landed, Loki knew something was off. 

“Looks like we might need a change of plans, Little Brother,” Hela smiled gleefully. She wasn’t looking forward to playing a support role and the prospects of taking the lead in killing Thanos thoroughly excited her.

Individually cloaking their team and their ship, the players cautiously got into formation. 

“Be vigilant, at least one of the stones are in play right now, I can feel it in the air,” Loki warned. “I will keep you all cloaked in seidr so Thanos shouldn't notice your approach. I can hold it for a good while, but not indefinitely. Make the time we have count.”

Thor looked up at Loki, but kept quiet.

“Brother,” Thor started, catching Loki’s arm. Loki wasn’t one to admit to weakness. Thor was worried.

“We are dealing with Thanos. There’s no time for bravado. We need to dispose of him and start the next part of our plan,” he hissed. “I know my limits.”

Thor doesn't budge.

Loki’s eyes softened. He patted Thor’s hand in reassurance and focused his seidr once more. This time, kicking seidr into the boots of each team member. 

Thanos was one that paid close attention to detail. If he was the only one on the planet, which Loki suspected he was, he would notice if there were any foreign track marks. They would have to skywalk.

Hela was watching Loki’s seidr work carefully and by the time he turned to her, she had already infused her own boots and was working on Thor’s. He would probably have looked more discreet with his wariness if he wrote, “I don’t trust you,” on his forehead, but at least they haven’t killed each other - or anyone else. Loki would probably call that a small victory.

She finished Thor’s boots, smoothed her hair back to bring out her horned helm and reached in her dimensional pocket with the most murderous smile.

Loki’s heart thumped in panic. He and Hela were on civil terms, but Thor and Hela seemed to still be on edge. Rather than waste time running over, he teleported to Thor’s side.

Hela just reached in and pulled out a hammer that looked suspiciously like Mjolnir, except this one had an adequate handle, “A greeting present from your older sister?”

Thor held the hammer confused. Even with Stormbreaker, he missed the feeling of holding Mjolnir. This one felt even more balanced than Mjolnir ever was. His body and his brain were in turmoil whether to accept or reject the gift. They stood there tense and ready for an awkward few seconds, before Thor came to an agreement with himself. “Thank you”

“I wasn’t going to kill him,” Hela kept up her psychotic smile. “Worry not, Little Brother,” she said, patting Loki on the head despite his towering over her.

Steve Rogers watched the strange interactions of these siblings, but said nothing to comment. If Tony was here, he would probably have had a lot to say. It was a little odd seeing Loki, the guy who tried to take over Earth just a few years ago, being treated as a child.”

Loki sighed, “Please do us all a favor and stop smiling, Sister Dearest. We need to go.”

* * *

As they exited the Benatar, Thor, Hela took off as if in competition with Captain Danvers guiding them from above towards the stones.

Why did he have to be stuck with such muscle head siblings? Before he could even finish the thought, they heard a crack of electricity followed by a weird sound. Loki led the rest of the team towards the same direction to see Thor and Captain Danvers ensnared in a trap and Hela nowhere to be in sight. There was also a considerably large bloodstain on the ground.

“You didn’t listen. How many times have I told you not to rush face first into traps!” Thor wasn’t sure if Loki was actually lecturing him or mocking him.

“The trap draws its power directly from the space stone,” Thor supplies, as Loki inspects the trap, “neither of us were able to break free. Hela disappeared with Thanos and the gauntlet. Not all the stones were there, but we don’t know where the rest are.”

Still struggling, “Thanos is still injured and it appeared he could only use a couple stones at a time, at least for now.” Captain Danvers informed. “Thor took off his arm, but he is still a formidable enemy, especially with the rest of the stones.

“Which stones did you see?”

Thor blinked.

Loki teleported Captain Danvers and Thor out of the trap. Instantly Captain Rogers, Rocket and Nebula get to work in locating the power source, the space stone.

“What stones did you see Thor?” Loki hisses grabbing Thor, “I need to know to come up with another plan.”

“I… I don’t know. I don’t think I saw the time or reality stone.”

Ah that confirmed it. Loki let go. What he had sensed was the time and reality stone. They landed in a time vacuum. 

“What does that mean?” Captain Rogers asked.

“It means whatever we do while in the time vacuum becomes undone the moment we leave,” Rocket says, “as in, nothing happens.”

“It’s here,” Nebula says, extracting the stone with Rocket’s containment gun.

Loki lets go of the seidr tendrils controlling their sky walking and invisibility and feels instantly refreshed. He and Thor will look for Hela as everyone else searches for the remaining stones.

Walking towards a small cabin where they feel the pull of tremendous power, Thor and Loki slow down to quietly take a look inside.

Thanos was confined to a chair sans hands and feet, while Hela walked around him waving the gauntlet around with the arm still attached like a headmaster lecturing a dunce. The severe onset of gangrene on his lower jaw rendered him mute and he was breathing heavily.

Hela mockingly patted his bald head with the gauntlet attached to his severed left arm. “How presumptuous of you to think that by destroying the soul stone, all the souls you reaped would be processed in the realms of the dead.”

“You claim to want to please me with the souls, but my dear, let me explain to you how superficial your life goals are. For the souls taken, these souls at least, I can look but I can’t touch. They were reaped prematurely and unable to reach their full potential. These souls provide little power and poisons the energy streams by their lack of closure, lack of life experience, lack of maturity - but mostly lack of closure. Their unfulfilled lives produce so much negative energy that forcefully recycling one of these souls, negates the product of three deliciously ripe ones.”

She circles around and pats his head again, “Funny that you call this place the garden, when you don’t know the first thing about gardening.”

*Pat pat pat. “But it’s not all bad, it’s actually quite wonderful that you put this place in a time vacuum. I can kill you over and over and instead of actually dying, you just gain more experience!” She exaggeratedly gushed.

Hela gripped his neck, furthering the necrosis as he made gurgling noises. She pushed him halfway into a portal similar to one she came out of on Midgard and held him there, leaving what’s left of his limbs, twitching.

“You see, I can do this over and over and we can discover more ways to gain death experience. Oh I bet I can even make beerenauslese with you after we’re done!”

She pulled him back out. His appendages were still missing, but the rot around his jaw and throat disappeared as if they were never there.

Loki and Thor looked at each other to see the other’s reaction. It almost felt like they were interrupting an intimate moment and that they were peeping perverts. 

Thor led Loki away from the house, “Brother, can we trust her?”

“We can trust her to get rid of Thanos and bring back those that were dusted, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Thor should know better than to ask Loki that question. He doesn’t trust anyone, not completely.

“Boys, you can come in! There’s no need to talk behind my back. I can hear you loud and clear,” Hela shouted from the cabin.

Thor studied Loki’s expression for a moment and reluctantly followed his lead entering the cabin.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hela gets a new toy to play with later.

Hela’s hand was still at Thanos’s throat.

“I was wrong about you,” He let out a bloody laugh, “you did have more resurrections. I should have made the most out of those when you were in my care.”

Loki kept silent as he gripped his blades tightly, reluctant to make eye contact. Instead he focused on fighting his inner turmoil just to retain some semblance of composure.

In a fit of anger, Thor swings Stormbreaker, disregarding the safety of Hela’s hand and slicing Thanos’s head clear off.

“Ha! Ok, now try to just get the head and not the neck next time,” Hela challenges, throwing the head into the portal and pushing half his body through like she did before.

She pulls him back more or less whole and a bit dazed.

Thor ignores her challenge, refusing to fuel her sadistic request.

“Sister Dearest, I believe we are on a schedule and there are realms waiting to be rebalanced,” Loki said, regaining his composure.

“How are we going to accomplish that when he activated the time stone? The moment we leave the planet, things will reset to the moment before we landed,” Thor growled annoyed.

“Ah, you do pay attention,” Hela said, clapping the gauntlet to her own hand.

Thanos laughs again, “You can’t. Time has stopped here. Even if you were to use the stones now, the previous orders would take precedence and cancel out whatever you do.”

“Fear not Little Brothers,” she pats his face with the gauntlet. “Time cannot stop Death. Contrary to your arrogant stunt. I am inevitable,” Hela said, opening a portal with a dramatic flourish. “After you Brother Dearests.”

Loki walks in and Thor warily follows into the portal keeping his eyes on Hela the whole time.

The first thing they noticed was the biting cold. Even as an ice Jotun the wind chilled Loki to the bone. A standard Asgardian probably would freeze to death within moments of setting foot on Niflheim. Luckily, Thor was ridiculously hot blooded, figuratively and literally so he probably wouldn’t die, but was just non-functionally cold. And Hela was Hela. Who knew what she was - surely not full Asgardian.

Hela throws the severed arm with the gauntlet and jumps in with one hand around Thanos’s neck and the other on his left shoulder. One unknowing of the situation would probably have thought they were posed for dancing.

They land in Niflheim, with Thanos whole again, just as he looked like before their ambush. However as soon as Hela finished stepping through,Thanos’s left arm along with the gauntlet dropped to the floor. Only Hela’s firm grip on his neck kept him from falling to his knees.

Loki couldn’t decide whether Thor looked more horrified when Thanos arrived in Niflheim whole or when his arm rotted thoroughly off from the shoulder in seconds.

“See? Now it’s permanent.” 

Hela touches his other shoulder and both his knees with a fluid motion and leaves him groaning as she summons two of her workers and fetches the gauntlet. 

The rotten state the arm is in makes pulling it out quite easy, albeit a bit messy. Inspecting the gauntlet, she appraises it as useless, plucking the two remaining stones, power and mind, out jiggling them in her palm like dice.

Despite their size difference, the two workers had little trouble taking Thanos away. Hela was probably going to take her time with him after this is all over, Loki guessed.

Thor had been silent almost the whole time, but just like before, the questions were written on his face.

“Oh don’t be such a prude. I’m just going to have a little fun later,” she stares at him a moment longer knowing what he wants to ask but refusing the satisfaction. Instead she just pivots and opens a portal back to the Garden, “We need to get back. The living shouldn’t linger here.”

* * *

“Come on, Brother, you still haven’t figured it out?” Hela haughty goads, “I’m not _with_ him. As long as there is something that can die in a realm, I can open a portal there to and from Hel. That’s how all realms of the dead work. Although I don’t suggest it as a regular mode of travel while you’re alive.” She turns to Loki, “Did they not teach this? All your pampered lives with all the tutors and schooling? No?”

They did, but Thor rarely paid little attention to anything outside of training and oddly enough, language studies: Groot.

“Anyway,” she scoffs and grabs Thor’s hand with hers and drops the two stones in, “for safekeeping.” She saunters off to find the others.

Thor looks at the stones in his hands. Now that he’s spent time with her, without trying to kill each other, there’s something about Hela that’s captivating. She’s so similar to Loki, yet so different. He’s not sure if he could ever forgive her for killing his best friends. He doubts he can ever call her ‘Sister’ as Loki has adopted, but maybe in time, they can be acquaintances.

His train of thought is broken as Loki nudges him to return to the rest of the group.

By the time the three siblings reunite with the team, Nebula, Captain Rogers and Rocket had located the time and reality stone and Captain Danvers had removed the time vacuum.

Phase one of Loki’s plan was more or less successfully complete, now come the tricky part.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Business calls during the trip back to earth

Aboard the Benatar, on their way back to Earth, Hela makes a request for a quiet place to contact the other necroplanets. Being in such close proximity to the parties involved, familial and spatially speaking, she defaulted as the point of contact for coordinating the great resurrection, as they had come to call it. It was a pain being the point of contact, but at least there’s something to do - although, she would very much prefer to be on a battlefield. It was such a shame she missed the great battle. She would have had fun pummeling Thanos’s forces. It would be unfortunate if her involvement somehow stopped Ragnarök again, though.

Preparations were being made right on time and it seems all the leaders came to a consensus to get rid of the pending souls as soon as possible before they contaminate the energy pools.

She took a deep breath and entered the coordinates to contact Queen Freya. Despite their different outlooks on life and war, Freya had been one of the few people she could ever call a friend, maybe an older sister, even. They were both deities of the dead, her being the actual goddess of death, Freya, the queen of the Valkyries, so needless to say, they had much interaction in the past. 

That was the past. Ever since her out of control killing frenzy, Hela had found it increasingly unnerving to talk to Freya. What made it worse is the lack of hate or blame Freya puts on her when they do talk. She is hopeful it was true forgiveness, but what terrifies her most is that it might be passive aggression instead. She knows that Freya is just waiting for her to initiate the conversation, but she is ashamed and reluctant to bring up the issue.

“Hela, it’s good to see you,” Freya says with a warm smile.

“Likewise, Queen Freya,” Hela replies, serious as ever. “The stones have been retrieved, save the soul stone which has been destroyed. But you knew that already.”

Freya smiles.

“If you are ready with your preparations, we will begin phase two of the plan. It is fitting that since the culling started on Midgard, that we will perform its reversal ritual also on Midgard.”

“I actually wanted to discuss with you about the situation as well. We still do not have the energy levels needed to complete the corporal bodies in time. In addition to Loki and my seidr combined, we may still have to draw on the power of the stones for a boost.”

“That should not be a problem. I can channel their power if that is necessary.”

Freya frowned, “I was worried you’d say that. Channeling that much power without a device can cause serious harm. Hela you must reconsider. Maybe Eitri can…”

“That won’t be necessary, I have bothered Eitri enough. He needs to recruit and rebuild first. Those lost on Nidavellir can not be brought back,” she said solemnly. 

Then with a hint of cheekiness, she added, “Plus I won’t die.”

“Very well, then,” Freya finished, but reluctant to end communication.

“How are Loki and Thor doing?” she finally asked with a hint of melancholy.

“Energetic little buggers aren’t they? They will be fine.” Seeing Freya still a little reluctant, Hela softens, “Queen Freya, I’m sorry, but you know as well as I do. I can’t allow them to talk to you. At least not yet.”

Freya sighs, “Yes, I understand. Thank you for looking out for them.” 

“I’m afraid I hadn’t done a very good job at that. Like much of Asgard, they hate me. Granted, I did try to kill them when we first met.”

Freya laughed, “Ha! I fail to recall anyone you didn’t try to kill upon first impression.”

Both women laughed. It was good to laugh out loud. Laughing out loud in the Asgardian court was always considered unbecoming of a queen and princess.

“It’s been too long, Hela. Come by and have a drink. The girls in Folkvangr miss you,” Freya offered.

“I still can’t forgive myself for what I have done to them,” Hela wanted to say, but left unsaid. Instead she remained silent, solemn. 

Freya’s smile slowly faded, “The invitation is open. Whenever you are ready.”

“Sheesh, are you two done creeping?” Rocket walked past them, opened the door to grab what looked like a severed thumb and left, “you’d think by your age, you would’ve gotten it out of your system,” he muttered walking away, “gods.”

In the short few seconds the door was open, Thor and Loki caught a glimpse and made eye contact with their mother just as communications were cut off.

Hela walked in front of the doorway, her slender figure somehow imposing enough to block the screen and any other signs of correspondence from view. “I’ll overlook it this one time, but you two are putting Freya at risk.”

“How is she doing?” Thor asked, sensing Loki’s reluctance. Then it dawned on him, “Freya?” There was no way he had mistaken the face of his own mother, and the names were similar enough, but he was pretty sure his mother’s name was Frigga.

“She’s doing well. She is my contact for bringing those lost in the culling back to the realm of the living,” Hela said. “And yes, Freya, Queen of the Valkyrior. She relinquished her name and reign to Odin as part of the deal to cease Asgard’s attack on Vanaheim.” There was bitterness in her voice.

“How did you think the Aesir-Vanir War ended? They fell in love and all was well?” She spat, “If he didn’t usurp her thrown, I wouldn’t have lost control and…”

“Nevermind. We’re almost to Midgard,” she quipped, changing the subject. She pushed past Thor, “Find Brunnhilde. We need her power to guide the souls back.”

Thor felt sheepish, and wasn’t quite sure what to say, “Who’s Brunnhilde?”

“We’ll pick her up as soon as we locate her,” Loki assured, reading the atmosphere and pushing Thor out back to the common area.

Hela didn’t realize she was gnashing her teeth and had her hands balled up in fists until she felt the dampness of blood in her palms where her nails had broke skin. She was going to stab him, maybe take out his other eye now that he has a cybernetic one. Hopefully Freya won’t mind. Just another reason to add to the long list of why Freya should hate her.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The players are almost gathered. Time to find the Valkyrie. Luckily she’s in a civilized location.

Thor couldn’t help but feel a little left out - okay, maybe a little jealous. Was there some connection going on with Loki and Hela that he wasn’t in on? He didn’t want to acknowledge it.

“Brother, do you have anything Valkyrie owned or maybe a strong tie or memory with her I can draw from? The only one strong enough that I have was an unpleasant one that I doubt she would want to answer.”

Ah, the light bulb went off. Brunnhilde is the Valkyrie. Thor had a Eureka! moment. She had never told them her name and he thought it would be rude to ask, especially since he wasn’t looking for courtship.

“Uh… no. The only thing I had from her was the obedience disk I gave you.”

“Huh, last time I remembered, you didn’t give it to me,” Loki said mildly annoyed, retrieving it from his dimensional pocket. “You planted it on me and left me writhing on the floor for hours.” 

“I’m sorry, Brother,” Thor started, “I thought you would have escaped sooner.”

The wretched thing knocked the god of thunder, who throws lightning at people and electrocutes them. What did he think it would do to someone who didn’t have high concentrations of electricity literally running through his veins?

Loki didn’t even want to talk to Thor anymore. He wouldn’t understand the mess he made after leaving Sakaar, the planning and execution of a months long revolution because he decided to skip out with their champion. Sakaar was much more savage and harder to subdue than the peaceful planet Loki and Hela took over on a whim a few weeks back.

Loki pooled his seidr in his hands cupping the obedience disk and whispered a spell. Hopefully her ownership over it trumps whoever else used it. Most of all, he was hoping it wouldn’t be the Grandmaster, scurrying out of whatever hole he was hiding in, to answer the call. 

A discarded memory of the Grandmaster’s forever roaming hands came to mind and how everything he said or did in Loki’s presence boardered on sexual harassment. He shivered at the thought, trying to reestablish the distance.

Loki reached with the tendrils of his seidr until a familiar energy radiated back to the obedience disk. Refocusing on the signal, he gathered the tendrils until there was a firm connection.

“So you didn’t die, Lackey!” The Valkyrie thought sensing his unmistakable presence. She was in decent spirits, considering the threefold genocide she had gone through.

“It’s Loki,” he emphasized with irritation.

“Valkyrie this is important, I need to know where you are. We’ll come pick you up and I’ll explain on our way back.”

He focused a little more. She wasn’t in the nine realms, but close enough that he might be able to push his seidr through and look around and find out her location himself. He gave it a quick thought and debated whether he wanted to waste anymore seidr. Stopping the fight between Thor and Hela, teleporting to Thor’s side, and breaking Thor and Captain Danvers out of the trap had used more than he would have liked, but hopefully securing five of the six stones would give them enough of a power boost to mass reproduce shells needed for the resurrection.

“We’re located somewhere near Kvennavagn,” she answered, “just a couple jump points from where we split from you guys.”

“Loki,” Thor tapped him to get his attention.

Swatting his hand away, Loki started to struggle with maintaining the connection. 

“Loki, ask them how they are.”

Loki brushes his brother’s hand off his shoulder. There was a sheen of perspiration developed on his brow, as he forwarded the message along, “Thor wants to know how you are.”

“We were lucky enough to land on a friendly planet celebrating their new King and Queen,” she replied, “Everything was going well until poof! Their people, our people, livestock - half of everything just disappeared. It’s been rough sinc…”

Loki lost hold of the connection due to his brother’s constant pestering. 

“Did you get it? Did you find out their location?”

“Who’s the dung fly in someone’s ear now,” Loki muttered. “Yes, I have a good idea where they are. We should head off once we regroup on Midgard.”

* * *

Back at the Avengers compound, waiting for Thor to safely situate the stones, Loki took out Laevateinn to store more seidr. Curious. It took on the shape of a blade, maybe something in between a dagger and a short sword. It definitely doesn't look like a twig anymore. He had already put enough seidr in to drain him thrice, but it still seemed to hunger for more. Just how big is its seidr capacity?

A knock came at the door and Thor burst in.

“I don’t know why you bother knocking when you don’t have the patience to wait for an answer.”

“Well since you’re here,” he puts Laevateinn in Thor’s hand, “hold this for a bit, will you.” Then he steps back to observe.

“Loki, what is this? I think it’s leeching power from me.”

“Hmmm good,” Loki hummed, taking Laevateinn back. He wanted to try something. It turns out that as long as it wasn’t laying or held horizontally, the user could stem the automatic seidr absorption. Loki held Laevateinn, concentrated on Thor’s newly introduced seidr and threw it. 

He didn’t realize he was holding his breath until he realized the lights were out. Thor was looking through the hole in the wall - which led to another hole and another hole.

Feeling a little adventurous, he tried calling it back. 

It didn’t come back. It was worth a shot.

Following the holes in the walls, they finally got to where Laevateinn landed, deeply embedded in a tree trunk a good few yards outside of the compound.

Thor seemed to be a little bit too excited about the damage it caused. Stark was not going to like this. “What do you say, Brother, time to find the Valkyrie?”

“I’d say excellent idea.”

It was probably best to bring her back and give her an explanation about Hela before they tear each other’s throat out. Maybe he could disappear for a bit and take care of some kingly duties while he’s at it.

Loki puts his palm on Thor’s forehead and projects where to go. Thor summons the Bifrost with Stormbreaker just as a weak, but angry Tony Stark followed by a meek Bruce Banner runs out of the compound after them. 

The brothers share a laugh about the impeccable timing. The last time they were in the Bifrost together, the timing wasn’t too good and Hela managed to catch up to them throwing them both off course and straight to Sakaar. This time they land safely.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How convenient that the Valkyrie and the remainder of the Asgardian Refugees landed on a friendly planet. Loki isn’t quite keen on Thor finding out about his relations there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I absolutely suck at naming things. Kvennavagn from the previous chapter is the lady’s carriage, which is Ursa Minor for us I think? Hence Ursarol. I just have a vague memory from Mythology 101 years ago, correct me if I’m wrong. Just didn’t want it to sound too Earthly. Ursa rol apparently is some kind of insulation, at least that’s what it looks like, lol.

Loki, however, did feel Thor veer slightly off course from the Valkyrie’s location, but he didn’t question it at first, unsure of how Bifrost travel with Stormbreaker differed from normal.

Leery about what Thor knew from their connection earlier, Loki had to ask, “What are we doing outside the palace?”

“I thought it best to give thanks for taking care of our people, from one king to another,” Thor said proudly, “Isn’t that what you would do, Brother?”

He was impressed. Thor had grown, but was it just growth or is he trying to force a confession out of him. This certainly was his game, but at the moment, he wasn’t too keen on being recognized by one of his loyal “subjects” and thoroughly worshipped, especially not in front of Thor. Hiding under a different appearance would stir up Thor’s suspicions - which he didn’t want either.

Too late.

“Your Highness! Oh you’re back!” a serf ran into the palace hysterically, “his highness has returned to save us!”

Luckily, it didn’t seem like the hysteria was specifically addressing anybody in particular.

“I guess their king just returned as well,” Thor said, oblivious to the fact that ‘said king’ was standing next to him.

Loki let out a breath of relief and kept the guilt from reaching his smile.

Just then, they heard a familiar voice, “Hey mate, it’s good to see ya! Had me wondering if you’d be coming back for a moment there.”

Miek squealed from his arms.

“Come on I’ll show you to our camp,” Korg said, “just went to pick up some food and I was headed back anyways.” He had an assortment of fruits, vegetables and rocks.

“Ay, it’s good to see you too, my friend,” Thor said following him as Korg continued to chatter away.

Loki thanked whatever was out there that drew Thor’s attention away from the palace. Loki’s cover wasn’t completely blown.

“...from what I gather, the new king and queen step in and completely uproot and revitalize the government - kinda like what we did on Sakaar. The people really like them here and were worried about their safety when half the population disappeared. They supposedly scurried off to their honeymoon or something - you know, which is weird because the people here also say they are siblings. Not sure how that works out, but I’m not here to judge. It’s a pretty common thing among those Olympians...”

Loki made a face and tuned Korg out. He was happy to hear their place of power had not been contended, but he was certainly less than thrilled to hear that the people thought he and Hela were a married couple.

Thor leaned in to whisper, “Brother, I think this realm may not be as safe as they thought. We’ve been followed since we left the palace grounds.”

Loki cursed himself. He had felt it too and by how poorly they were hiding their presences, he would say these were likely just snooping civilians.

They arrived at the camp and the Valkyrie came out to greet them, but Loki remained antsy and wanted to keep on moving to avoid the growing crowd of people, eager to welcome their king back.

“Welcome back, Highness. The people will be happy to hear of your return - you too Lackey,” the Valkyrie says.

“Are you ok, Lackey?” She interrupts herself, “you seem more fidgety than usual.”

“Fine. Fine. I’m fine,” Loki replied a little too quickly. He needed to find a place to hide. The natives were starting to gather.

Before he could say more, someone had grabbed his coattail with a soft yank. An old woman lay down a small basket of fruits at his feet and backed away. More natives followed suit, laying down baskets of breads, rounds of cheeses, reams of cloth, trinkets, amulets and backing away, all mumbling something that sounded vaguely like, “my king.”

“They really like you, huh?” Korg commented, “Well I gotta get back and put these away. Talk to ya later.”

“Mistaken identity, I assure you,” Loki said, backing away a bit, sounding more tentative than he would have liked.

Thor and the Valkyrie waited for Loki’s explanation all while the natives kept bringing their offerings. Palace envoys arrived and with the sound of the trumpet, the royal announcer announced the return of King Loki.

Exasperated, Loki gave up.

With an exaggerated, “tada” gesture, arms welcoming, he said, “As King, I welcome you to Ursarol.”

“Loki, what did you do?” Thor hissed through his teeth.

Shrugging non-committedly, “Nothing. They needed a leader, I led.”

One of the palace envoys grabbed his hand, “My King, I’m so happy you are looking well. What of Queen Hela? Did she…”

“She’s fine,” he patted her hand, looking for an excuse to get away, “She went back to her planet for the time being.”

“These people,” he gestures behind him, “they are refugees from our home planet. Thank you for taking good care of them even during the midst of the crisis. Queen Hela and I will see to it that the people who disappeared will be returned.” 

He waved to the gathering crowd and excused himself, retreating to the center of the Asgardian refugee camp as fast as he could. He already felt the flaming wrath of the Valkyrie lashing at his back.

“Loki I can’t believe you took over another planet,” Thor whispered, walking fast to catch up with him.

“What can I say, the Allfather rubbed off on me,” he said, throwing his hands up.

The Valkyrie caught one of his arms as he was bringing it down. “What was it they said about Hela?”

Loki was not looking forward to this conversation, but nor could he escape it. He didn’t even bother fighting to free his arm from the Valkyrie’s iron grip. He would have better luck just cutting it off and abandoning it as a souvenir.

“I suggest we find a more private spot for this conversation.”

She let go and nodded for them to follow her into her tent.

Loki rubbed his wrist as Thor followed close behind.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi Valkyrie, come to Earth with us, by the way, your arch nemesis Hela is alive.

“As the last living Valkyrie, you’re the only one than can guide the warriors and those lost in the culling back to the realm of the living. We just need you to lead the way for the souls to be reattached to their corporal body. Moth-... Queen Freya will coordinate from the realm of the dead while Hela and I will be preparing here in the living,” Loki finished explaining.

“I know you hate her and I know you would prefer to not work with her, but this is much larger than us or even Asgard.”

Her brows furrowed. She was still bitter with betrayal even after all those years spent in haze on Sakaar and she was reluctant to accept working with Hela again. However, she has lived long enough to know how to put aside past differences for the sake of others - especially when said others meant half the universe of living things.

Loki pulled out a small leather wrapping and pushed it to her, “Hela also told me to give you this as a sign of peace and that you would understand.”

Upon setting eyes on the wrapping, her features softened. Both Thor and Loki were surprised to see her look so impossibly young, even younger than she normally looked. There was also a hint of vulnerability that one would not expect to see in an elite force such as a Valkyrie. 

The Valkyrie’s fingers trembled when she touched the bound leather, as her eyes threatened to water up. She gathered herself and picked it up to open it revealing a whetstone and a small dagger.

Her vulnerability took a sudden turn to aggression as she picked up the dagger, sunk it in Loki’s side and stormed out.

“Brother!” Thor shouted, concerned.

Loki nearly sank to his knees. Gripping the table for balance as he yanked the dagger out. “For once, I’m not sure I deserved that,” he said regaining his composure.

That was one thing Loki liked more about Midgardians. When they were mad at each other, they would usually show aggression (when not trying to kill someone) with a punch to the face or stomach. Asgardians stab with little daggers by default. Well, he needs to speak for himself, but that’s just what is done. It's a messy ordeal for cleanup. 

He gingerly put a hand to his side using the little seidr he could spare to heal it enough to stop the bleeding. It was really more of an annoyance rather than horribly painful.

“It must mean something to her if the just the sight of it made her want to stab something,” Thor observed. “I’m beginning to wonder whether they had a hidden past - well, I mean outside of the whole killing all the Valkyries thing.

“Thanks for being so observant,” came Loki’s dull reply. “I’ll have to ask Hela what the significance of the whetstone was,” he muttered to himself.

“It’s just a whetstone that she used to borrow from me often. Dragonfang used to really like this stone in particular,” came a voice supplying proper background information.

There it was. An unmistakable pressure that permeated the tent. A tingle went up Thor’s back at the sound of her voice and based on Loki’s expression, he probably felt that same tingle too.

“This stone in particular would sharpen blades so well that if you threw the blade up in the air, anyone less than skilled that couldn’t catch the blade properly would surely have their throat slit,” Hela boasted.

The information was trivial, but Loki couldn’t help but get stuck at what kind of idiot would do such a thing. Any blade thrown up in the air could injure if not caught properly. He pushed the useless thought away.

“I thought we left you on Midgard,” Loki stated flatly.

“I’m here to pick up Brunnhilde. So did you give it to her? And?”

“And she stabbed me,” Loki said, showing her his blood ruined clothes. “What did you think she was going to do?”

“Ah, she’s still angry, then.” There was a note of disappointment in Hela’s voice. She was actually the one hoping to be stabbed - for Brunhilde to let out some anger. Hela had finally gathered the courage to take Freya’s advice and initiate conversation, but by the looks of it, Brunnhilde may still be unwilling to talk.

“You did massacre her whole squadron,” Loki says.

Hela flinched a little like a knife to the gut. There was no excuse for that. She had complete control over the cursed berserker blood, and yet...

“Hela, maybe it’s best if you wait for us back on Midgard,” Thor said just as the sound of stomping neared.

“Who’s waiting for us back on Midgard?” the Valkyrie asked as she entered the tent, fully armored and ready to go.

“You!” 

Before either brother could say or do anything, Dragonfang found itself, in rapid succession, buried in Hela’s abdomen.

Hela refused to flinch or make a sound. There was only the squelch of metal slicing through blood and flesh. Hela just allows it to happen, taking the brunt of the blows unfazed as if they were just breaths of wind to the face - breaths of wind that made a bloody mess on the floors.

“Hildr,” Hela said warmly, hopeful that she wouldn’t scare her off or be ignored. Blood was already reabsorbing back into her body and the wounds were mostly closed up.

“I needed something a lot bigger than that dingy dagger for you,” Brunhilde said, pocketing the whetstone. Her eyes lingered on Stormbreaker for a moment until Thor protectively shifted its location.

Hela’s heart swelled and fluttered with the acknowledgment. It might be too soon to ask for forgiveness, but so far, it was a good start. Brunhilde’s eagerness to stab her proves it. She also accepted the whetstone - another sign of possible reconciliation.

Thor and Loki watch the scene unfold from the background, disgusted and mildly judgmental.

Whatever relationship these women had in the past was far from a healthy one even on their family’s standards.

Hela takes a half step forward towards Brunhilde only to be met with a dagger millimeters from her throat (not that it will do much). “Don’t touch me hag. We’re not through.”

The atmosphere is tense and no one moves.

Looking a little hurt, Hela retreats back to Helheim without another word.

“So are we leaving or not, Highness?”

“Uh… right,” Thor stammers. “Are we ready?” 

Loki and Brunhilde grab onto Thor as he readies Stormbreaker and navigates back to Midgard.

The remaining Asgardian refugees are safely in the care of Usarol and far enough from any battlefield to avoid another culling. If all goes well, they can rejoin their king once the aftermath of Ragnarök settles.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hela and Brunhilde make efforts to reconnect. Hopefully it doesn’t end with a body being reconnected with a blade.

By the time Thor, Loki and Brunhilde arrived at the compound, Hela was already lounging in the common area with her nose in a book - the same one she was reading while walking the hidden paths.

“You never struck me as the reading type,” Brunhilde said, pulling the book up from behind Hela.

“A thousand years of boredom changes a woman,” Hela said, not moving from her position. “That is apparently one of my father’s journals.”

“Odin’s? What does he have? Conquest, conquest, slaughter, muscles, conquest, glory?” Brunhilde said, absentmindedly flipping through the pages, but not reading them. The handwriting sure looks different - for one, it’s legible.

“Loptr’s. Apparently. I was adopted.”

Thor looked at Loki in surprise who just slowly nodded.

“Guess he always had an affinity for picking up strays,” Brunhilde said with a shrug. “So you an ice Jotun too?”

“Hmmm not sure,” she hummed, “Based on the spells in the journal, likely part Muspel?” This is good. Brunhilde is talking to her. Now she just has to not act too weird and keep her talking.

Their pointless small talk reminded Hela of her younger days as when she would hang out in the barracks of the Valkyrior. Those long Vanir summers when they would train and drink and consummate their...

“Oh, that’s why Surtur couldn’t kill you!” Thor cut in.

Hela’s face turned murderous and then back to normal so quickly one would have missed it if one did not know what to look for. 

Why could this man not read the moment? She was reminiscing. For a split second, Hela had an intense urge to stab Thor.

Loki, one whose expertise was in reading the moment, immediately spins Thor around and hurries him out of the room with an excuse that they have much to discuss with the remaining Avengers and a promise to catch Thor up on the details.

Once out of Asgardian ear’s reach, “I can’t keep saving you like this, Thor. Learn some tact,” Loki hissed. “Even you picked up that those two beasts have a history. Leave them be.”

“With the destruction that Surtur caused, I was just wondering why she wasn’t destroyed as well. She was at the center of it.”

Loki was a little hurt, “Might I remind you that I was in the center of it too.”

“I knew you would come out unscathed, but now that you put it that way, how did you come out unscathed?” Thor asked, genuinely curious. “Was it the tesseract?”

“No,” Loki quickly answered, “I…” he wavered when trying to finish the sentence.

Hmm he actually hadn’t thought about using the Tesseract at that moment, which was incredibly stupid of him. He could have saved so much energy and seidr by using the tesseract instead of half teleporting half skyrunning back to the Statesman. 

But that was odd. He was certainly surrounded by Surtur’s fire, but didn’t remember getting too horribly burned or really burned at all.

“Actually, I’m not sure. I just tried to get back to the ship as fast as I could,” Loki said tentatively. Surely having the soul of a Muspel Jotun didn’t make him impervious to fire. The Black Order thoroughly proved that during his stay on the Sanctuary. 

Sensing Loki’s discomfort, Thor quickly changed the topic, “So Hela’s adopted too, huh? I was beginning to think that I was the adopted one seeing how similar you and Hela appear.”

Loki let out a short chuckle, “About that,” he scratches an eyebrow, “Hela and Eitri seem to think I might be her father - a previous incarnation of me anyways. Apparently he was Odin’s brother and the one rumored to be the spearhead that triggered Ragnarök a few millennia ago.”

“Lokk,” Thor mumbled quietly, drawing up a vague memory from his visit to the Norn pools.

“What?”

Thor stared deep in thought, brows furrowed. “I…I don’t know. I remember hearing that name in a vision I had. I don’t remember the details.” He did remember the ominous feeling he had when he heard the waters whisper the name. He feared what this meant for Loki. 

“Hmmm,” Loki hummed, “the name we heard was Loptr, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were the same person or incarnation of the same person at this point.”

Was that hesitation he heard in Thor’s voice? And maybe a little fear? Whatever he saw in the vision, if it caused fear in the mighty Thor, it was something to prepare for. Loki made a mental note to revisit the topic after this was through.

“So what do we do now?”

“For now, we wait,” Loki said, “I need to put more seidr into Laevateinn in order for this to work. The spell we need is the forbidden one that was supposed to bring the fallen warriors back from Valhalla for the last battle of Ragnarök - which didn’t happen, by the way. To do that, we need to bring the Valkyrior and other psychopomps who are trapped in the realms of the dead back to the realm of the living. The souls in waiting, need a guide to be reintroduced to their new corporal bodies.”

“Which is where Brunhilde fits in. The Valkyrior are the only type of psychopomp that are technically living and she is the last Valkyrie.” 

One can only wonder whether they should be considered lucky how narrowly they escaped a permanent destruction of half the universe.

“I’ll need to do some research on how to modify the spell in order to encompass the other realms of the dead instead of just Valhalla. The other necroplanets have been flooded with the dead from the culling as well and Hela has been in communications with their leaders to prepare for the revival.”

Thor had not thought about that, Hela already being an official ruler of another realm, even if it is a realm of the dead. For the past millennia, seeing that the Asgardians still die, the Aesir are still reincarnated and Niflheim hasn’t completely fallen apart causing imbalance to Yggdrasil, he came to a realization that Hela might actually have been a decent ruler in her own morbid way. 

“You brothers better have a good reason for firing a railgun in the building,” Stark chided, “and not letting me in on it.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Valkyries have a special meal they eat before and after battle. Hela makes her version of it, but it looks questionable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s a longer one. Just some domestic life.

Loki retreated to his room leaving Thor to deal with Stark.

From what Hela told him, it seems the realms of the dead were growing restless of, well, the dead. Time was of the essence to recover the pending souls, but he still felt a tug in the back of his mind that they still did not have the energy levels or seidr to pull it off at such a grand scale. Rather than waste time and continue to burden himself with worry, he takes out Laevateinn and decides to put his all into it. In the compound he should be relatively safe. There’s always Nebula, but it seems she has a few people on her side to dismiss her as an immediate threat.

Just in case Thor or Hela does stumble in to see him passed out and demand vengeance, he hastily scrawls a note in explanation. Satisfied that all his bases were covered. Loki closes his eyes and lets Laevateinn drain him.

* * *

Laevateinn lay on the table beside his hand.

He didn’t know how long he had been feeding it seidr nor how long he had been unconscious. But he does know he woke up with a terrible headache much like he did the day he first teleported to Thor in Wakanda - telltale signs of overexerting his use of seidr. A blunder only a novice would make, and yet he made them with full knowledge of how dangerous it could be.

“I’m beginning to think you actually have a death wish, Highness.”

He must be really out of it. He didn’t notice Brunhilde sitting on a tilted chair with her feet propped up on his table until she started talking.

Loki presses his palms to his eyes. There was very little seidr he had in his reserves to relieve himself of the drain so he would have to settle on dealing with it manually. 

“I thought you were with Hela.” He said quietly.

“I was. Now I’m not,” Brunhilde said, “We came to check on you. When she saw your note, she plucked the dagger out of your hand and stormed off. Something about not wanting to spend eternity with you.”

Loki let out a laugh despite the headache’s protest, “The feeling is mutual.”

“Thor stopped by too.” Brunhilde supplied, “he just picked up your dagger for a bit and left.”

Loki’s eyes widened, “How long did he hold it? Where is he now?”

“Hmm not sure 15-20 minutes? He’s back in his room.”

Loki shot up immediately to check on him, but a wave of nausea and dizziness punished in for the sudden movement. He staggered slightly only to be caught by Brunhilde’s strong arms. 

“You should probably rest a bit more, Highness.”

Steadying himself, he brushed off Brunhilde’s arms and walked off the dizziness on to Thor’s room.

* * *

Thor, a person that normally could not sit still, was uncharacteristically lounging on a comfy chair when Loki found him. He was asleep like he had just gone through a rigorous workout, but with the information Brunhilde had supplied him, Loki knew better. Not used to his free form seidr working so hard, Thor was probably drained as well. 

Loki touched Thor’s forehead lightly using up what little he had recovered to soothe the impending headache when his brother awakes. A wave of vertigo hits in protest, but Loki braces himself with the back of Thor’s chair. 

Loki sighed, Thor probably wouldn’t know what the best way to recover and was probably planning to muscle through it much like how he solves most of his problems. Loki was going to have to prepare a special recovery meal to make sure they were both ready for the great resurrection. Even if he didn’t have enough seidr, maybe Thor and Hela could make up enough for this to actually go through. A nagging feeling in the back of his mind worried it still wouldn’t be enough.

He takes a moment to steady himself before he navigates towards the kitchen. Stark, or rather Ms. Potts usually keeps the pantry pretty well stocked with nutritious foods so hopefully he wouldn’t have to get Friday to order them anything.

The two minute walk to the kitchen felt like it took eons, but he finally arrived.

“You need rest, Littlest Brother,” Hela said, not even bothering to look up from the cutting board.

Just as he showed signs of protest the cutting knife grazes his cheek and embeds itself in the wall behind him. Hela continues cutting with a newly materialized knife.

“I expected Thor to know nothing of the dangers of overusing seidr, being a replica of Odin, but apparently you don’t either. Freya will be ashamed to claim you as a pupil!” Hela said harshly. “I did not gift you Laevateinn to kill yourself.”

“Whatever you were planning to do in the kitchen, I’m doing it already. Brunhilde is picking up more ingredients from the Midgardian market with Tasha’s help.”

During the long trip from Usarol to Nidavellir, Loki learned not to defy Hela’s orders when she was serious, but couldn’t help but be curious about why the Widow wanted to accompany Brunhilde to the marketplace. And why was Hela calling her by such a familiar name? Rather than protest, Loki politely asked if Hela needed help and at the decline, settled himself with a book on the couch in the commons area. Before he knew it, fatigue had taken over him again and he had drifted off with the book over his face.

* * *

It was nearly 7:30pm when Loki was awoken by a foul smell. Thor was setting the table with a sour look on his face as Brunhilde was draped over a chair across from Loki and flipping idly through TV channels. None of the others were to be seen.

“Good that you’re awake. Help me get the rest of the food from the kitchen. We’ll need all the energy we can get and this will help us maximize it,” Hela instructed.

Loki looked down at the so-called “food.” Contrary to what Hela had claimed, this was not what he had in mind when he headed to the kitchen to cook earlier that evening. Whatever he held in his hands didn’t look edible let alone appetizing with the off colored greens, purples and reds. He swished the dish around to get a better look and tried to ignore the fact that he might have seen an eyeball swimming in the thick saté. The whole dinner looked like it needed to be magically concealed so it would be a mystery to the person eating it. The worst of it was the smell - a mix of burnt carbon, sulfur and the rotten stench of flesh. How fresh ingredients from the marketplace could be rendered to such a condition, Loki dare not ask.

He set the dishes on the table and sat down between Thor and Hela. 

Thor seemed a little skeptical of the food as well.

“What’s wrong Lackey? You look like you saw a severed finger in your soup or something. Eat up!” Brunhilde teased while munching on something that looked suspiciously like the eyeball he saw earlier. 

“I thought Freya would have made this meal for you before. All the Valkyries of Folkvanger eats this before and after battle. This one is ‘Hela’s Stamina Special’. One she developed based off Freya’s recipe. It’s quite good,” Brunhilde added.

After his residency in Sanctuary, this was probably not the worst thing he had eaten, but it came very close. Loki closed his eyes and swallowed the first spoonful. It was unexpectedly palatable. If one can get past the appearance and smell, it was actually quite tasty. With newfound encouragement, Loki experimented with the other dishes to find them pleasant. The most surprising part was that he actually _felt_ the swell of seidr and energy replenishing. Never in his centuries had he ever come across a spell or potion that worked this efficiently. Not even the meal he was planning on preparing could have replenished this quickly.

Thor eyed his brother for a reaction. He was surprised to see Loki eating it enthusiastically and decided it was probably safe to eat. Loki was probably the single most picky person he knew in regards to food quality. If he seemed like he liked it, it couldn’t be half bad. Plus Hela and Brunhilde seemed to eat the food like it was pretty normal.

The evening passed quietly with no death threats or bloodshed. It was the first time the four Aesir had sat together for a meal, but it almost felt normal. Like it had always been and neither of the four had ever been guilty of trying to kill the other three.

The next morning, Thor would take Brunhilde to Ria and pick up a familiar and Loki will start retrofitting the spell with Hela’s help. The remaining Avengers and Guardians have done what they can. Here on out, it is up to the Aesir to fulfill their duty as claimed protector of the realms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you’re wondering, it’s in my mind that whatever Freya makes looks just as bad as the Hela Stamina Special, but because it’s a traditional Valkyrie dish, that usually only Valkyries eat, no one really thinks it’s odd. Just a bit of culture shock for the Odinson brothers.
> 
> How would I describe this, has anyone had stinky tofu from Hong Kong or Taiwan? It stinks like sewage. I could smell the scent of a stinky tofu stall from 3 square blocks away (if it’s good). And the mixed sauce of browns and reds and purplishes looks like someone chugged random sauces, jumped around and regurgitated it into a to go bag. HOWEVER put it in your mouth and it is life-changing. It is so good.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Well rested and reenergized, Thor ventured out to the rooftop to stretch expecting to soak up the rays of the morning sun. He didn’t expect to see Brunhilde asleep and comfortably curled up next to Hela.

Hela places a finger over her lips to silently shush him, then with a flourish almost like Loki’s, pulls out a pair of sunglasses, based on the dramatic flare, no doubt, Stark had given her. It was an unusual scene to wake up to, given Hela seems to be Brunhilde’s sworn nemesis. But then again, Hela has not shown any visible hostility to Brunhilde since Asgard. Thor couldn’t help but wonder what unspoken histories had transpired between those two.

Loki was also awake and in a lab space consulting old texts from his private collection. He was stumped. Delighted, yet frustratingly so. He could figure out how to configure the spell to work with known races and living beings, but for the life of him, couldn’t figure out how to account for species he did not know about. Even he wouldn’t be arrogant enough to claim knowledge of all species in the universe. 

It has been a while since he was last stumped by an equation which made him all the more interested in tackling it, but he was also on a schedule and he needed to figure this out before the realms of the dead implode and start recycling unripened souls that still have life to live for.

“Take over any planets recently?” 

The mocking tone and annoying voice could only be one person - Tony Stark.

He looks so emaciated compared to when Loki saw him last. Loki secretly wondered whether he should feed him some of Hela’s leftovers from the night before. Would he also recover quickly or would his mortal body just explode? He should try it later.

Loki gave his best political smile. “Why yes, with Hela, in fact, just a few weeks ago. Then there was Sakaar a couple months ago,” he started listing. Actually was it a couple months? Maybe it was a couple years, it was always hard to calculate with Sakaar’s time difference.

Stark looked mildly disturbed, but not exactly surprised. “Just wanted to make sure we weren’t on your to do list,” he said, picking up a heavy bound book only to find it in a language that he can’t read.

Without looking up from his current volume, Loki waved his fingers and the runic characters rearranged themselves to modern English, hoping for some reprieve. Stark immediately started skimming through the pages, but somehow reading doesn’t hinder this man from continuously talking.

“So what are we figuring out today, Rudolph?”

“Nothing you mortals would begin to understand.”

“Yeah? Ok well let’s hear it anyways, I’m sure Bruce and I could probably figure something out,” Stark said, stepping up to a challenge.

Loki handed him his notes. Wonderful! These were numbers. Formulas. Not magic jumbo jumbo. This, he could work with. “I’ll be right back.”

As soon as Stark left and he finally had his peace and quiet again, Thor ran into the lab like a storm.

“Aren’t you and Brunhilde going to pick up one of those winged beasts?”

“Brother! I was! But then I went to the rooftop to stretch and then Brunhilde was there and Hela was there. And then she woke up and grabbed a sword and cut her into pieces! Oh Norns, Loki, she didn’t even fight back.”

Alarmed, Loki was wondering who chopped who to bits, since it made a difference - a BIG difference. “Slow down and tell me exactly what happened,” he said following Thor to the scene of the crime.

Midway through, he was relieved to hear Hela had been the one that became minced meat. He wanted to get back to the lab, but followed through to the rooftop at Thor’s insistence.

Hela was mostly put back together when they arrived, but Loki could tell, the fact that it still looked quite gruesome, meant it had definitely not looked pretty moments ago. Hela casually sat by the edge of the pool holding her left forearm in place so it would reattach. Her right leg was still in pieces in the water and she had a mosaic of cuts, both healing and open, littering her body. Loki was taken aback by the scene, reminding him a little too much of the consequences of his unsuccessful suicide attempt - maybe he wasn’t literally in so many pieces, but it certainly felt like he was.

Brunhilde stuck around, studying a small mound of cubed flesh as she slowly pieced a left hand together. Whatever anger or discontent she had seemed to have dissipated for the time being as she concentrated on solving her gory jigsaw puzzle. When she finished, she walked over to Hela and gave her a hand, gently holding the wrist in place as it melded back with the rest of her arm.

Thor was shocked into silence as the scene unfolded. He was unable to move until Brunhilde, having just fished Hela’s leg out of the pool, walked over and patted him on the shoulder as if nothing unusual happened.

“Time to go, Highness. Morning stretches are done. Let’s grab a pegasus and hurry back.”

Thor could only nod, dumbfounded and comply with the request. With a blast of light from Stormbreaker’s bifrost, they were gone.

Loki walked over to Hela and sat down beside her surprised to find her expression calm and somewhat content. 

Maybe she was a born masochist, he thought to himself.

“She said she would forgive me,” Hela said in a bittersweet tone, “but she can’t see us how we were.”

Loki’s eyes widened. So they _were_ together at one point. That certainly explains a lot, but at the same time, generated so many more unanswered questions.

“Ah I loved those girls…”

Girls? Plural? As in multiple Valkyries? Loki wondered.

“We used to &)#@@$;69&)#&(.,!_{\> and -)&[¥€]_~+{|}<=3<}££|§ and they would #]_<$§%’ and sometimes Freya would…”

Loki held a hand up for Hela to stop monologuing. “Are we going to figure out this spell or not? Put yourself together. We need to get back to the lab,” he ordered. He sat down to see if she was fine, but obviously she was, if she had the brain capacity to think about these things so soon after being chopped into pieces.

He was in no way close to an inexperienced virgin (and even if he were, Sakaar would have changed that), nor was he such a square that the sexual deviance described would cause him to cringe or blush (again, if so, Sakaar…), but adopted or not, he would really rather not hear about the sexcapades his sister had with his mother in their younger days. Especially when they were so obscene they were rendered into symbols instead of words. (How does that even happen with spoken language?)

Ughhh why couldn’t they just have gotten all six stones and just undone everything. Now he has to work with these muscle bound idiots. Right… damn Thanos… based on Hela’s colorful descriptions for pleasure, he didn’t want to think about her creativity for torture.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For us humans, I would think most people would agree that Hela and Brunhilde’s relationship here is quite toxic and abusive, but I must also argue that they aren’t human so our understanding of their actions are invalid. Brunhilde knows and understands fully well that cutting Hela to pieces isn’t going to do much, but slow her down a couple of minutes - like pushing someone into a muddy ditch. The action is mildly malicious, but not meant to cause life threatening harm. 
> 
> I’m not supporting the violence, but judge as we may, it would be a little arrogant to think what we think of as morally right and wrong can be applied to all possible intelligent species.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The kinks are worked out for the spell. 
> 
> Freya and the Valkyrior return.

Back at the lab, Stark and Banner were already playing with the equations and testing out the numbers.

Loki wasn’t thrilled to see Stark, but he was open to Bruce helping out.

“Hey Reindeer Games, we got something for you,” Stark said, expanding his notes into a large hologram for everyone to see.

Loki looked it over with Hela. After a few long minutes, he hummed, “Hmmm it looks sound, but it will take a tremendous amount of energy. Even if we can spare it on our end, I doubt the necroplanets could take such a hit and remain functional.” 

Hela studied it a bit. Most of these numbers went over her head, but in terms of calculating how much energy each necroplanet could put out and spare, that, she knew like the back of her hand.

Loki had an idea and flicking his wrist, projected his addendum to the formulas, “This will render the portals a little unstable, but…”

“...we can improve the energy efficiency by nearly a third,” Bruce finished, “Plus if absolutely necessary, we can borrow the power of the remaining infinity stones or worst case scenario open additional portals as older ones collapse.”

“That’s correct, it would use up a little more dark energy than I would like, but it’s still an improvement from before.” Loki was impressed. He didn’t think mortals could grasp this level of computations in such a short amount of time - and this was a particularly hard concept, even in Asgardian standards.

“Absolutely not. He is not going anywhere near the stones,” Stark cut in, pointing at Loki.

“Might I remind you, I was one of the people who went to retrieve the stones when you returned a walking skeleton,” Loki shot back, taking an assertive step forward.

Stark refused to step back.

“Children, children,” Hela spoke, “there’s no use arguing when none of you could hold more than three stones at once. If and when it comes to that point, I will wield the stones.” Her words were final. “We start the spell once Brunhilde and Thor returns.”

* * *

It turns out, pegasus are creatures that could naturally walk the hidden paths and run across galaxies on the dark energies of the bifrost. They were just as fast if not faster than many of the vessels Thor had been on. Unfortunately for him, only a Valkyrie as a rider could unlock their potential as they are genetically bred for the Valkyrior. Any other rider would only be able to ride them as regular flightless horses.

Thor was having the time of his life aback the pegasus as he remembered all the stories his mother told about the great Valkyrior warriors, strong as any Asgardian einherjar and twice as deadly. Odin had always dismissed them as exaggerated fairy tales, reasoning that the Valkyrior were single handedly defeated by an evil warlord that Odin had later taken care of personally.

Brunhilde helped him off the beast’s back as they arrived at the compound - apparently there was a certain way the rider had to dismount lest he or she wanted to be kicked in the face.

It was time. As the remaining Avengers figure out the logistics as to how to get the revived back to their homes, the four Aesir prepare for the delivery.

Hela returns to the Benatar to communicate with the realms of the dead to ensure preparations were finished. The first wave they had to bring back were the Valkyrior. The other psychopomps will operate using proxy bodies and return to the dead once the resurrection has completed.

* * *

Brunhilde takes off to Folkvanger galloping on a burst of light like a comet navigating away from the earth. Loki focuses his energies to proceed with the forbidden spell. Luckily, he didn’t have to use the modified version of the spell for this part. The Valkyrior were a known warrior class - their numbers and location all known factors. The challenging part was to make sure their bodies materialize near their souls for Brunhilde to guide them back quickly. The more souls she put back, the more help she would have in resurrecting the others.

With no way of contacting Brunhilde on the field, they could only hope everything went smoothly. The first evidence came at the sound of beating wings and hooves over the late morning sky a mere 45 minutes after Loki performed the spell. First only a couple, then more and more arrived at the compound until 23 Valkyrie, Brunhilde and their commander and Queen landed gracefully on the well trimmed lawn. The rest of the squadron had already been sent to the realms of the dead awaiting orders.

Thor and Loki froze at the sight of Queen Freya as Hela remained hidden in the shadows of the Benatar.

She dismounted in the glory of her full armor and all but ran to her boys hugging them fiercely, “My boys, oh how I’ve missed you dearly.” She let go briefly to look them both in the eyes. 

The lack of physical affection for the past few years had Loki almost forgetting where Thor had inherited his great bear hugs. It was greatly welcome, but it caught him by surprise.

It was also unusual seeing her in full armor, especially Valkyrior armor. As Odin’s Queen, there were often times in court where it was required she was adorned in armor, but the pieces were usually ornamentally symbolic rather than functional. The decorated breastplates, vambraces and shoulder guards were designed with elegance rather than practicality in mind and more often than not, difficult to fluidly move in. The Valkyrior armor on the other hand, were made of a special cloth woven to be stronger than any chain mail in existence, a perfect balance of beauty, functionality and flexibility. Odin was never able to figure out where to find such a fine cloth. 

She gripped them both again and let go, “Where’s Hela? We were looking forward to seeing her.” 

Brunhilde caught Hela snooping in the shadows and purposely greeted her loudly and publicly for all to hear. 

The other Valkyries enthusiastically greeted her as if that day never happened. As if she never lost control in a fit of rage and betrayal and slaughtered them all. Curse Odin. He was the reason they had turned on each other. 

Freya hung out near Thor and Loki until the Valkyrior had all made their greetings. As Hela approached, Freya took her into a tight embrace. “What is the saying nowadays? Hindsight is 20/20? Death offers clarity like no other. Most of the Valkyries had long forgiven you. Especially since it was only a matter of time before Ragnarök found a way to bring us all back. You just preserved their youth for an extra thousand years,” she smirked.

“I wanted to give you time to forgive yourself and find closure instead of rushing you,” she said, not letting go. “I’m glad you and Brunhilde have finally found peace.”


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The spell has started, and it’s working, but will they have enough power to follow through without the stones?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Unfinished End is almost... well finished! Officially one more chapter to go! The other two are snippets!
> 
> I know I only had 20 chapters at first, but it turns out I’m unexpectedly long winded.

For days Loki, Hela and Freya held the spell steady as portals opened across the universe for those taken in the culling to return. The psychopomps escorted souls to their waiting bodies and as the Valkyries led them through the portals back to the living world.

By the dawn of the ninth day, the first signs of strain started to appear. Laevateinn had already been depleted and Freya had near exhausted her seidr, but they were only at an estimated 65% completion. Loki and Hela took on the burden until Freya had time to recover.

Loki first noticed something wrong when a dull, familiar ache wrapped around his neck and he felt his seidr waiver for a short moment. Dismissing it as fatigue, he pressed on. Whatever it was, he was thankful his high collar covered anything that might be amiss. The Valkyries showed no signs of slowing down so the least he could do was to keep up with them. Humans, animals and other organisms taken, poured out of the portals in droves, in the skies, on land, up mountains and under seas.

Another day passed when Hela received dire notification from Helheim that dark energy levels had dipped and was fast approaching the critical low limit. The other necroplanets seems to be in a similar situation and also need more energy. By the looks of it, they could use more output in the living realm too.

Unaccustomed to standing in the sidelines, Thor provided support by replenishing Laevateinn with the little malleable seidr he could generate and tending to Freya. Overhearing Hela’s conversation, he jumped at the chance to retrieve the stones before they were even requested. He chucked to himself at his actions. The Thor from a few months ago would never have dreamed of handing over five infinity stones to his psychopath, bloodthirsty secret older sister and now he was doing just that.

He pressed the box containing the stones into Hela’s hand. “I trust you with these,” he said out loud, more to himself than to Hela.

Hela simply smiled and continued to pour seidr into the portals as the box disappeared into her dimensional pocket. She knew the stones had a way of corrupting the user. She would use them only as a last resort and even so, she would have to proceed carefully.

Loki’s forehead glistened with sweat. There was definitely something wrong as he felt more familiar pains - a sharp stab through his chest, and a blow to the side of the head.

“...oki. Loki. Stop, you’re bleeding.” Thor steadily gripped his wrist. Loki snaps into attention and let’s go of the portal, letting it collapse. His ears felt like they were full of cotton and he didn’t realize his chest and ear was bleeding until Thor stopped him. Once the portals completely closed, he felt fine. Tired, but fine.

Hearing Thor’s booming voice, Freya also comes near.

“I...I’m not sure what happened, but I’m fine now. We can continue.” Loki said. It was true that he felt good enough to continue, but it wasn’t true that he had no idea what happened. His head, his chest, his neck, these were from the times he was sure he died, but somehow woke up again. He wasn’t sure why these old wounds had been acting up since all of them had already completely healed.

“Not until we check you over,” Freya fretted like the worried mother she was. She opens up Loki’s tunic to see no wound, no blood - nothing but a long thin scar that had long healed. His head seemed fine too - no signs of concussion or other trauma. Skeptical, but without proof of injury, she releases him to redress.

Hela had been silently observing the whole time.

Just as he was about to open the portals once again, Hela roughly grabs him and pushes him towards Thor, “Make sure he gets nowhere near the portals.” 

Loki starts to protest, but Hela’s actions confirm Freya’s suspicions. She quickly teleports away with Loki and Thor in tow.

They land in the common area on the other side of the compound. 

“Mother, I am well and I can continue,” Loki argues, but stops at Freya’s light sobs, Thor already at her side.

“I know you are strong, but I will not risk losing you again,” she vocalized in frustration.

Loki froze. Does she know about the deaths? Of all people, he especially did not want her to know in fear of breaking her heart. But how did she know? Of the three, she was only alive when he received the head injury. And to be honest, he wasn’t entirely sure how he got that one, maybe hit a space rock during his endless fall in the void or maybe he was knocked out by Thanos’s men when they found him. He just woke up on the Sanctuary with the grievous head wound that he was sure he had at one point died from. By the time he saw his mother again, the wound was already completely healed, without even the slightest signs of scarring.

Freya wipes her tears and calms herself, but could not calm the ache of her heart, “I will not ask you how you received those wounds and I’m afraid to ask how many more you might have. The realms of the dead crave your soul. It will do you good not to stand so close, lest you want to be pulled in.”

Loki puts on his impassive face to keep himself from unraveling. “I’m not sure what you are talking about,” he denied calmly.

“All those times I thought you dead, they were real,” Thor said to himself quietly as if in denial. “Hela said souls who experience life and death frequently make desirable dark energy sources.”

Loki ignored him and started towards Hela only for Thor to grab his arm. Loki glared and pushes Thor hard enough that he loses his grip. If Thor thinks he can manhandle him into submission, he’s mistaken. “It changes nothing,” he said bitterly.

An explosion of color bursts in the distance where Hela was.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Saying good-bye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually the official end of Unfinished End. I will have some related snippets chapters at the end. 
> 
> If you like this storyverse, there’s more to come.

With Freya and Loki both out of the picture, Hela doubted that even with her power, she could finish this alone. She took out the little box Thor had given her that housed the five remaining infinity stones and poured them into her hand. Rather than waiting for her seidr to be depleted, she opted to use them while she still had enough seidr to defend herself if needed be.

Jiggling them in her palm a bit like dice, she clenched her iron grip around them to exude her power and closed her eyes to focus her will.

Using five stones at once proved to be straining even for her, but the power was phenomenal. At that very moment, she was the single most powerful being in the universe. Galaxies would bow down to kiss her feet if she so desired. But, no. She does not want that. What would be the fun if there was no need for physical slaughter. Hela was always a firm believer that conquest and domination must be done through hard work. What would be the point if it was handed to her on a platter by the stones?

The infinity stones felt Hela’s awareness of their corruption and loosened to give her more control, luring her deeper into the confines of their influence.

Hela wouldn’t allow them to influence her again. With one last push she willed the stones to work for her, opening the portals larger than ever to let the resurrected through. With the assistance of the stones, it took less than an hour before the last of the resurrected returned to the living realms. The stones sensed their use was about to end and fought against Hela’s seidr.

Nearly drained herself, Hela had to refocus her seidr now that she was no longer burdened with keeping the portals open in the realms of the living and generating dark energy for the realms of the dead.

Her hand, her arm, her whole left side stung like it was dipped in acid. The stones were dealing damage to her body much faster than she could heal. She needed to end this before they really do permanent damage. With a growl so feral, even Fenrir would be proud, she pushed back against the combined power of the stones.

There was a blinding flash of light and the stones dropped from her hand.

* * *

Freya, Thor and Loki rushed to where Hela was at the sight of the flash. The energy released had leveled anything standing nearby for meters. Residual energy clung to the air and crackled as the trio approached. They found Hela laying on the ground, unconscious with the infinity stones scattered like common pebbles. Common pebbles that were each glowing in an angry light.

The rest of the humans were still too busy shuttling the resurrected back to where they live to see the panic in their residents Aesir’s faces.

Loki does a quick scan with his replenished seidr. The good news is that Hela is alive and her seidr is replenishing as vigorous as it had before. The bad news is that her body has become severely disfigured. Muscle and bone were extensively exposed throughout the left side of her body and extending to parts of the right side.

The wounds look like acid had eaten through the skin muscle and bone. They radiated with the energy signatures of the stones and were healing alarmingly slow. Loki didn’t bother wondering how she was alive. She’s the goddess of death after all. 

Freya casts a healing spell with only for it to fizz out due to the residual power of the stones. The crushed powder of healing stones also proved ineffective. It was likely that Hela would have to heal on her own or forever remain as she is.

Thor went to pick up the stones and store them back into the box only to be severely burned by their still radiating power. By the time they were properly stowed away, his fingertips were raw and unhealing just like Hela’s wounds.

* * *

Hela woke up fully alert and was happy to see Brunhilde at her side. Brunhilde’s expression was grim.

“Everything went as planned, I take it?” Hela asked sitting up as if nothing happened. She checked the strength of her skeletal hand and of her dominant hand - hmmm, no difference, wonderful!

Brunhilde just glared, refusing to speak. In all honesty, she felt guilty. She couldn’t help, but wonder whether her attack on Hela days ago had caused a weakness in her healing abilities given the damage to her left side, the same side she did a number on. In reality, Hela just held the stones in her left hand to spare her sword arm from damage if the stones were to rebel - and rebel they did.

The tense moment is interrupted by Freya’s knock at the door. A short pause later, she lets herself in, followed by Loki.

“It’s good to see you awake,” Freya says as she sits familiarly on the side of Hela’s bed and pats her good leg. We’ve been consulting with Eir and looking for different spells to help reknit the flesh and skin. We’ll find a solution,” she promised.

Hela glanced at her skeletal hand again. Her brows furrowed for a split second before it was schooled into her usual look of indifference. “It’s fine either way,” she said, picking at her imaginary fingernails.

Loki knew that look better than most, but didn’t say anything to burst her bubble.

“Ahem.” He cleared his throat, “anyways, I have an after battle meal prepared for you.” He said as a large tray of food materializes in his hands. He had consulted Freya on her recipe and Hela’s recipe, then made some of his own adjustments. All the nutrients, sans the horrendous smell and unappetizing appearance - Freya was quite impressed by his innovative rendition of the meal.

Brunhilde made an approving expression, but still opted to remain silent.

Hela grabs the tray and walks it over to the table spreading the food out for everyone to share. She quickly realized the missing flesh in parts of her leg made her walk with an awkward gait, but she made adjustments to accommodate hoping no one noticed.

Even without the meal, her energy and seidr levels had already been replenished in full, nevertheless she gratefully accepted the kind gesture. Freya, Brunhilde and Loki sure looked like they could use the restorative properties of the meal.

Brunhilde remained silent throughout the whole meal. Freya knew exactly what was wrong, but continued to make small talk with Loki pretending nothing was wrong.

They quickly cleared the meal and left Hela with Brunhilde alone.

The two women sat in silence. Hela was first to break.

“I won’t apologize.”

“I know. And you shouldn’t.”

Another long pause. Both struggled to dig for words.

“Come with me to Folkvanger.”/“I need to get back to Niflheim.”

They said at the same time. Both knew their priorities had diverged and accepted their paths.

“If you’ll have me,” Hela continued slowly, clearly, cautiously. “I would be very happy to visit Folkvanger to see you and the other Valkyries.”

Brunhilde nodded. “Yeah, I’ll swing by Helheim too.”

She abruptly stands up. “I...uh… gotta get back to the rest of the girls. There’s still a lot of loose ends that need tidying up,” she makes an excuse to leave and runs out the door.

Hela relaxes into her chair. She had to admit, that went a lot better than she had thought it would, but she really had to get back to Niflheim. Even though she was curious about Jormungandr, Niflheim was probably a mess and needed her immediate attention. She would return to her own realm for now.

She conjured up a rune stick and left the room.

* * *

Loki and Thor were saying their goodbyes to Freya. They promise to visit, but Freya specifically rejects Loki’s offer.

“We may be living in Folkvanger, but the Valkyrior straddle the realms of life and death. Valhalla is still technically a necroplanet. With your unique condition, I rather you didn’t take the risk. I will come visit whenever I can,” she promised, gently brushing his cheek.

Her tone made it clear there was no room for argument. Loki could only reluctantly nod in agreement.

“I’ll return once Valhalla and Folkvanger are back in running order.”

With one last hug for each of her boys, she turned and led the Valkyries into the skies.

Hela emerges from the compound, and waves as they take off.

“I should get back to Niflheim as well, to wrap up some things.”

Thor moves in for a hug only to be met with a sharp glare. Getting the hint, he tries to unsuccessfully play it off. 

She pats him on the head as if he were a small child and turns to Loki, handing him a rune stick.

“What is this?”

“A rune stick.”

Loki kicked himself for letting this conversation to happen again.

Hela smiled - a genuine one. “It was a rune stick Loptr entrusted Eitri to give me.” Her bony finger tapped at the stick, “There’s a message at the end for you.”

“It’s ancient technology, but I trust you can figure it out.”

He clasped his fingers around the rune stick as she pats his back with a heavy hand and turns to leave.

“Hela!” He calls out. He summons a beautiful green and black feathered cloak from his dimensional pocket and puts it over her shoulders. With half her flesh still healing, she looked smaller and weaker than ever, but the heavy thrum of her seidr suggested otherwise. Even in this condition, she could still wipe the floors with both her brothers.

Hela was surprised. The cloak cast an illusion over the exposed muscle and bone making her look whole again. Her leg even felt whole and she no longer had to overcompensate to walk without the weird gait.

“Just until you heal.”

She raised an eyebrow, “I rather liked that look.” Truthfully, she was getting used to it. It surely struck fear into her subjects and anyone who was dumb enough to cross her. She pulls the cloak closer around her. “I guess it would help stave the cold winds of Niflheim.”

With that, she gave him a wink and disappeared into a portal.

* * *

~ And that finished the end ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading. I hope you liked it. If you can spare me some moments, I would love to hear from you in the comments or via message. 
> 
> Also, there is a prequel to this called, “Brothers of Iron and Blood” which takes place much before Thor I. A little something something about Loptr.
> 
> I plan to have a sequel to Unfinished End as well. Stay tuned.


	22. Related Snippets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki uses Tony as a lab rat.

With Hela resting in one of the guest rooms, Freya busied herself with preparing a celebratory meal. She was disappointed that Midgard didn’t take the common credit currency of most of the civilized universe, but was grateful that the Midgardians provided all the ingredients in thanks for spearheading the resurrection efforts.

Loki studied closely and interviewed a number of the Valkyries for information on the recipe. There had to be a way to at least make the meal look and smell more like food.

His first experiment failed to keep the same restoration properties, but at least it looked and smelled like something edible.

“I never realized you’re a cook when you’re on a break from taking over planets.”

How annoying, Loki thought. He could really do without the commentary. Then he had an idea. He barely kept the crooked smile from crawling up his face.

“I do enjoy cooking every now and then,” he said with his usual aloof tone, “fancy a try?” Loki could use this opportunity to see if the recipe works on mortals or if it doesn’t, prove whether they would spontaneously combust. 

“Is it poisoned?” came Starks usual snark.

Loki gave him a look.

“I assure you won’t be able to tell, if I did,” came Loki’s retort.

He did bring the kid back and the food does smell pretty good. Tony thought, what the hell, and took a bite of the fragrant meat stew. He figured Loki didn’t waste all that energy to bring back half the universe only to be petty enough to poison him.

Tony hadn’t been too hungry, but the stew was quite eclectically delicious and before he knew it, he. had finished a full helping.

“Not bad Lokes, not bad!” Stark said, “ugh I’m so full.” He decided to lay down on the couch a bit and immediately fell into a deep sleep.

Loki quietly walked over to Stark and beratedly stabbed his cheek with a finger. Hmmm interesting, even though the food failed to compare to Hela’s recipe and failed to blow up a human body, it did provide the nutrients to rebuild the body. He observed and watched the phenomena as Stark fattened up back to how he was when they first met. Loki figured Stark may be in a bit of pain or fatigued when he woke up. Excellent, he thought rubbing his hands together.


	23. Related Snippets II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hela comes home to Thanos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to take this opportunity to remind everyone that despite Hela being mostly on the heroes’ side in this story, she is still a cruel, sadistic, twisted psychopath. Thousands of years of conditioning doesn’t get undone that easily. 
> 
> Death isn’t inherently good or bad. It just is. Sometimes death comes cruelly, sometimes swiftly, but it always becomes more creative. Hela’s actions encompass all possibilities of death.
> 
> On a second note, I imagine Hela exists in her own head a lot and enjoys monologuing so much because of excessive loneliness and boredom. Her base personality had been suppressed since childhood and she had been in solitary confinement for about ⅕ of her adult life. I mean, even Thor does this and he was in a cage in Muspelheim for like 5 minutes.
> 
> Warning for some light hearted torture and public humiliation.

Thanos woke up to someone stroking his head. The stumps that had once been his elbows and knees still seared in pain despite the new skin covering them.

“Good morning, Darling. The help tells me you’ve missed me.”

Snickers were heard in the background. Hela shoots a sharp look in the general direction and the laughter quiets.

“What have you done?” He rasps.

“Wrong question. Try again,” she says tapping at the thin skin over the bone of a stump.

Thanos keeps silent to deny her the satisfaction of ordering him.

Hela looks unamused and keeps droning on like an outdated supervillain revealing a devious plan. None of the words reach his ears, but he notes that she likes to hear herself talk, much like her useless younger brother.

The skin from the stump of his arm was abruptly ripped off sending him curling in a silent cry of pain. They must have done something to increase the sensitivity in his nerves.

“Do pay attention.” Hela tutted. “As I was saying, to repay the debt for saving me from eternally drifting in space, I have decided to give you new arms and legs, you can thank me later. They will be much better - an upgrade from before, if you will. I, as the goddess of death, am known far and wide for my exceptional healing abilities. I have seen all wounds imaginable, and don’t worry, I will do all I can to make sure you make a full recovery.”

“Now lie back and close your eyes.” She said with a predatory smile as a helper forces him into slumber.

Thanos wakes up unexpectedly refreshed. He didn’t think she would follow through to help him, but perhaps he did charm Lady Death.

He sat up to realize Hela’s cruelty and her a cackle from above. 

“How are you feeling?” She asked without expecting an answer, “I’m glad you like my gift to you. Do take care of them. I will take great offense if you don’t.”

She stifled another cackle, “You don’t have to worry about all those sore muscles and calluses now. Smooth as a baby’s bottom and weak as a lamb.”

Although the limbs were fully functional and he was no longer in pain, she had cruelly attached the limbs of a preadolescent Terran to his body.

Hela sends a transmission to the Benatar addressed to Nebula.

She orders her workers loud enough so he could hear, “Take him away for hard labor to clean the dark energy pools.”

The workers pull him off the bed and the legs immediately snap, unable to hold his weight. The workers ignore the injury and continue to escort him as they were ordered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little wild, I know. Just thought of Deadpool’s baby legs. Sorry not sorry.


	24. Related Snippets III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Possibility of bringing the Asgardians back to Earth - wait... all of them?

“Loki, Brother,” Thor started slowly.

“I’m not slipping away. If that’s what you thought,” Loki said.

It was.

“I’m King of a realm and there are important matters I need to attend to after the resurrection. Especially now that there’s an influx of Asgardians on my planet. You’re their King so you’re coming with me.”

Thor perked up.

“You’ll be my ride there too. After Ragnarok, Yggdrasil has become fragile. She’s not stable or mature enough to grow branches to a new realm.”

She? Thor thought. 

“Brother, when you said an influx of Asgardians, do you think…” Thor trailed off tentatively, but Loki was quick to catch his train of thought.

“I anticipate so. Most people who died during Hela’s raid, died fighting. Those who died during Thano’s attack on the ship, died fighting. Those that turned to ash, were brought back anyways,” Loki gave it some thought. Death must really hate him. Following his own logic, if Hela hadn’t brought him back, he would have eventually been brought back anyways when the gates of Death opened for the resurrection.

“Mother returned. That means,” Thor worked it out to himself out loud, “Heimdallr, Volstagg, Hogun and Fandral have likely returned as well! And…” his giddiness on the prospect of seeing his friends again quickly faded, “Father.”

Loki gave Thor a look of concern. “Father isn’t coming back. You’re still King,” he said gently.

Thor nodded, struggling to hold back emotions, “I know,” he said in a near whisper, “Hela mentioned even she didn’t know where he went.“ 

Loki clapped Thor’s back. With a flash of the bifrost, they left Midgard and was back on Usarol.


	25. Related Snippet IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new player has entered the game.

**~A few months ago~**

Looming above the Asgardian ship’s wreckage aboard the Sanctuary, a heartbeat pulsates from the treasure vault.

Slow at first, speeding up to an erratic pace then finally settling on a strong, steady rhythm. 

Without his dear brother’s binding spell, the Eternal Flame contorted and solidified back into the shape of a man. The flames were drawn in and reabsorbed back into the body with a hiss. Loptr sat up numb, but very much alive.

“Finally,” he said, flexing his limbs.


End file.
